Blaine gently turned Caris, guiding her away from Nathaniel, her feet stumbling over themselves. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
She let out a painful little laugh, for it was obvious there was no safety to be found no matter how far she ran.
Six
NATHANIEL
They threw the body into the basement, locked up inside a makeshift cell that was once a storage room. It was windowless and dark, and the air tasted like dust on the body’s tongue. The cold air was like sandpaper on the burns that streaked the body’s skin, and Nathaniel knew hedeservedthe wounds.
If he’d only been strong enough, maybe the body would have listened to him and not the insidious control that permeated every part of his mind and body ever since he’d left theKlovod’s operating table.
The body lay there in the dark after regaining consciousness, Nathaniel’s fury and worry and self-hatred relegated to a corner of his mind. The only thing the body’s face allowed an expression for was pain, which didn’t seem to surprise Blaine when the other man finally opened the door to the storage room. The sconces in the wall turned on, gas lamps lighting up the emptied storage room, revealing the body still sprawled on the floor.
“Who are you?” Blaine asked as he stepped inside, followed by two men who held themselves with the bearing of military. One carried a pistol and the other a wand, and Nathaniel couldfeelthe body calculating the odds of overpowering them to get out and deciding not to.
“I’mNathaniel,” the body’s mouth protested, words edged with pain as it pushed itself up to a sitting position. The burns on its arms pulled sharply, and it didn’t stop the gasp of pain that came to its lips. “What is the meaning of this? What happened to me?”
Blaine stared down at the body, hazel eyes shadowed and unreadable. He stepped closer, and the guards at his back tensed, shifting about so he wasn’t in their line of sight. The body bent its knees, raising its arms to look at the burn marks that had yet to be treated. Every motion made his nervesthrob.
Caris hadn’t tried to kill the body, merely warn it off, and Nathaniel ached with the knowledge that it was his hands that had nearly killed her, for all that he’d had no control over them. The body hadn’t listened when he’d screamed for it tostop, tolet her go, todon’t touch her.
It hadn’t listened to him, but it had listened to theKlovod.
“What do you remember?” Blaine asked after a long moment.
The body shivered, head tilting back so it could look up. Nathaniel peered through its eyes, seeing Blaine looking down, in no hurry to help. “Caris had worked through a meal. I had gone to invite her to dine in the garden. Then I woke up in here. Was there an attack? Did debt collectors find us?”
The stress and fear in the body’s voice was pitch-perfect, the way its breath came quick and ragged. Nathaniel tried to get its tongue to shape different words, but that muffled wall between his own consciousness and what lived in place of himself refused to break.
“No debt collectors. Only you.”
“What do youmean?” The body extended its arms, hands curled up in a beseeching manner. “How did I get these burns? What is goingon? Where is Caris?”
“Safe from you.”
The body jerked back at those words, reacting in the way Nathaniel knew he would if confronted in such a way. “I wouldneverharm her.”
Blaine flicked his fingers at Nathaniel’s chest. “Those scars say otherwise.”
The body looked down at its chest, Nathaniel saw the cuts theKlovodhad sewed up and healed just enough with magic to scar before covering with a veil were now on clear display. The veil Nathaniel remembered being sewn into his body had been removed, scabbed-over marks where the thread had been ripped out in places all the evidence that remained of its placement.
“Blaine,” the body said in a weak, horrified voice, swaying where it sat. “What happened to me?”
“That’s what we’d like to know.” Blaine crouched down, out of reach of the body’s hands, and the guards behind him shifted position yet again. “You say you were forgotten in the paddy wagon during the riot and that’s all that saved you from revenants. You say Scarlette helped you leave Amari, and then we lost Paradis and that chain. You were taken by debt collectors, but I can’t be sure you weren’t like this before that.”
“You can’t possibly think I’d aid Daijal.”
“Not of your own free will.” Blaine tilted his head to the side, gaze searching the body’s face. “Butrionetkasdon’t have any.”
The body flinched at that word, responding in the exact emotional way Nathaniel would if it had truly been himself facing off with Blaine. “Blaine,please. I don’t know what is going on.”
“Neither do we. And because of that, you will remain down here, under guard, until we determine how best to deal with you.”
He stood and walked away, the guards slipping out of the room behind him. The door was closed, lock clicking into place, before the lights were turned off, plunging the room back into darkness.
The body sat there, breathing slow and even now that no one was watching, with Nathaniel screaming in protest where he was trapped in a distant corner of a mind that wasn’t his own.
Seven
