I consider yanking on his hair to lever his neck uncomfortably back, but then a better idea lights up my mind. As he yells, “Lastra, move your ass,” I trace the key sigil on his armor, and my hand sinks through it. And then I paint it again on the damp fabric of his shirt and my palm hits perspiring skin.
He must feel my fingers along his flesh because, before I can even shape the first part of the symbol, he rolls me off his shoulder and flips me around, ramming my spine into his breastplate and pinning my wrists with his palm.
His breaths smack the shell of my ear. “And you wonder why I locked you in a cage.”
“I never wondered, Dante.” I twist my head back so that he doesn’t miss a word above the clamor of the night. “I know. You, Dante Regio, fear me. The same way you fear Lorcan and my people. You are a cow—” He bands his forearm around my neck and crushes my windpipe. “—ard,” I bite out the last syllable before he assumes I’m comparing him to an agreeable, four-legged animal. Especially since cows are sweet, and Dante is not.
“Shut. Your. Mouth. Fal.”
“Nev—er.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to shut it for you,” he growls, clutching my neck so tightly that the wainscoted walls begin to fleck away like ancient stucco.
But suddenly, the ground rumbles and glass shatters. Dante mutters a curse beneath his breath and widens his stance to keep his balance, and though he doesn’t remove his hand from my neck, his grip slackens.
When guttural shouts score the air in time with raucous caws, my lids prickle with more tears.
Lore’s here.
My mate’s here.
Thirty-Two
Imake sure to drag my feet to slow Dante’s pace as we near another staircase. Though Meriam told me my magic wouldn’t work on Dante, instead of clawing at his arm, I attempt to circle it in blood. How handy would it be if Meriam was wrong and I succeeded in chopping it off?
I scrabble at his sleeve until I find a spot I can circle entirely—his elbow. There, I draw a line of blood, and lo and behold, it shears off the white fabric, but like I was warned, it does diddly squat to his flesh.
“What the fuck?” he growls, his grip loosening some more.
I twist around and smack the heel of my palm into his eyepatch. Startled, and hopefully in shitloads of pain, he drops his arm and bellows for his guards to restrain me. I scramble toward a wall, my hip bumping painfully into a console table, upsetting the heavy gold candelabrum that sits on top of it. Before I can draw my key sigil, a red-eyed guard streams fire in my direction.
Though his flames don’t touch my skin, they lick up the front of my dress, chewing the silk. I hinge at the waist and clap the fabric just as the Faerie jets another stream of fire. The candelabrum’s wicks ignite, and so does the seashell wallpaper, which crackles and blackens. I lurch away from the wall of fire but cannot run, for Dante’s garrison encircles me.
Fuck.
I seize the candles in the candelabrum and toss them at the approaching men. They sizzle as they sail through air and splash wax over a few faces. Lastra growls, long and low, driving his shoulder into his eye to remove the wax clumping his eyelashes. Face streaked with fury, he assaults me with his vines. I bat each one away, wishing it was his face.
On Dante’s command, one of his men lunges at me. I swing my makeshift weapon. The candelabrum meets its mark and the male totters.
I whack him again, and his head flies sideways. Something cracks. I pray it’s his skull, even though I’m not far enough gone to believe a fractured skull will suffice to kill a pure-blooded Fae. After all, purelings heal fromallwounds, save for an iron blade through the heart or throat.
My skin goes clammy at the memory of Cato’s death, but then I focus on the fact that my mate is out there, fighting to reach me, and the chills stop radiating up my spine. I grip my candelabrum with all my might and will them to come near me for I will bash all their skulls.
The ground shakes so hard that I have to soften my knees not to bang into the smoldering wall.
Fallon?Lore’s voice is a shot of adrenaline straight into my heart.
Lore?
“The Crows are here, Maezza. We need to fall back!” one of the soldiers bellows as Lastra crouches beside his knocked-out friend.
He starts to haul him over his shoulder when Dante growls, “Leave him. It’s Fallon we need!”
Lastra’s green eyes flash with hesitation because he knows what will happen to his friend if he leaves him here—no Faerie is getting out of Xema Rossi’s home alive. Yet, good little devotee that he is, he totters back to his feet. His jaw clenches as the strip of fabric tied around the cut on his thigh darkens with more blood.
I’m glad I caused him pain, but I’d be even gladder if I’d cut into another part of his body. Why couldn’t he have been the one standing behind that curtain? Why Cato?
Lastra assaults me anew. I blink away the heat prickling my eyes and swing. However, it isn’t vines he streams my way, but a tangle of branches. And not just regular branches but ones dappled with thorns that burst from the bark and sink into my ankles before making their way up my legs.
