She jerked her head at the guards. Julian’s dragon surged up, and Eloise’s eyes snapped to him, bloody and feral. “Try anything and I’ll kill her,” she snarled.
His dragon hesitated.
The guards didn’t.
24
Francine
A third guard came up behind Julian. His gun looked different from the ones the others were holding.
Her brain sparked into overdrive. This wasn’t the desperate, guilt-twisted strategizing that had brought her here, making plans that fell to pieces the instant she set out on them. It was instant. Instinctive.
The same instinct that had made her pause instead of ripping out Irina Mathers’s throat.
Eloise wouldn’t kill Julian. He had no value to her dead. But she could injure him, or drug him to keep him docile, and she couldn’t let that happen.
Eloise probably wouldn’t kill her, either. Sneering at corpses was no fun.
She twisted and leaped. The fog that had filled her mind since Elly’s pharma friend Angelo dosed her with his poison didn’t lift, and her senses lagged behind her movement. But that didn’t matter. She didn’t need to feel what was happening.
It was probably best if she didn’t.
She threw herself in front of Julian just as the bodyguard fired.
The first dart hit her in the shoulder. The second hit her collarbone, and by the time the third hit, everything hurt too much to tell where it landed. Pain flooded through her veins, and her vision went gray.
“Francine!” Julian’s voice was so close, it reverberated through her bones. She stumbled backwards and felt his arms around her.
Safe.
She almost choked. Safe? They were both probably about to die, and the first thing that came to her mind was that having his arms around her made her feel safe?
They weren’t safe. They were theoppositeof safe.
“Run!”she snarled. Her body barely felt like her own as she smashed upwards, her skull connecting with a guard’s chin and sending his head snapping back. Someone pinned her arms. She twisted, fangs lengthening to bite their neck—
A crack, and the guard holding her sagged. She didn’t waste time figuring out what had happened. Julian was on his feet. She grabbed his hand—Don’t speak into his mind, you saw what that did to him—and lunged for the door.
Another sharp noise, and pain bloomed red and bloody. Her arm. Her arm didn’t matter. She could still run, she could still—
Her vision swam.Move,she told herself.Keep moving.
Behind them, Eloise barked an order. Julian grabbed her, and shadows curled around them. The two guards rushing up to them hesitated. Julian twisted, brutally efficient, and slammed a guard’s head against the doorframe.
Thenhehesitated, frozen in time, staring at what he’d done. Francine swore and pulled him with her. “Hurry!”
She shoved him, and he snapped out of it, shouldering his way through the door, pushing Francine in front of him. They ran down the corridor. Francine’s mind raced ahead. The vehicle bay—no, she didn’t know her way around the garage. The Francine who’d designed this place hadn’t cared about the aesthetics of the vehicle storage. She’d left theboring bitsto an assistant.
What else? Where could they go?
The deck. The storm was raging all around, and with Julian’s magic they could stay hidden until … until…
Fog swirled inside her brain. She blinked. Shadows danced along the walls of the corridor, too—was that Julian’s magic? Or—
Pain lanced through her. Her arm was red agony, but this was different, a sickness that twisted in her veins. What had been in whatever the guard had shot her with?
The ship lurched again as they reached the exterior door. It was locked for the storm. She slammed one palm over the quick release. A green light blinked, and the door started to open.
