She’d been busy.The windows were all cracked, some of the metal mullions bent, and it looked like she’d tried to take apart the bedstead too.
Huh.“Careful.”Erik couldn’t help saying it.“Glass on the floor.”
She looked at him directly the first time, and he found out her eyes were actually dark blue, like summer twilight.“Three of you.”Her voice shook, but her chin lifted and her hands were fists.“Great.”
“We mean you no harm,” Ignatius said, spreading his hands; his signet glittered.She barely glanced at him, all her attention taken up with Jake, who moved in on her with spooky, darting speed.
Don’t, you idiot.Erik winced as she stumbled back, her heels hitting hardwood with hurtful, bruising sounds.His left wrist burned—if he was feeling it, how much more was Ignatius?Age meant experience, both meant power, and all three responded toliraiwith exponential sensitivity.
She was heading right for scattered arcs of broken glass.There were even marks on slivers worked free of the uprights.
Wet smears, crimson as the throbbing not-tattoo on Erik’s wrist.
“Miss Stellack.”Ignatius’s tone said he was used to being obeyed, but Erik didn’t think theliraicared.“We do not wish to harm you in any way.”
“But you’ll do it if I don’t cooperate, right?That’s how these things work.”She was backing for the bathroom.Not a bad choice.
“Father.”Erik heard his own voice, soft and exact.Funny, it didn’t match the tension gathering in him.“She’s bleeding.”
“Just relax,” Jake said.“Just relax, sweetie.”
Thatwas the wrong thing to say.Her eyes narrowed and she bolted sideways over a glittering arc of broken window.The bigger pieces were twitching, trying to gather enough ambient energy to fly home, and her heel landed squarely on one.
Erik wasn’t conscious of moving.One moment he was a coiled spring behind Father, right where he should be.The next, his arms were full of spitting, scratching, screaming wildcat, and she gave him a good open-handed slap across one cheek—more because she was flailing than from any real intent, but it snapped his head aside and he had to work to control the reflex that would have answered such a blow from anyone, anythingelse.
“Easy,” he muttered.“Easythere, ma’am.Easy.”
Looked like this girl didn’tdoeasy, though.She might have taken a self-defense course or two, but her slight weight and wild motion were all but helpless against a trained Son of Ymre, one who had taken the touch of the Flame on the corrupting mark of the god and not turned away despite the agony.
Still, he tried to be as gentle as possible.And it was… pleasant, to be this close to a potential.
Very pleasant indeed.She was throwing out a lot of energy.Tiny champagne bubbles slipped over his skin, flooding the meridians.The mark was whittling itself deeper on his left wrist, too, but the tingles—and the relief from persistent whispering—overcame the sting.“Easy,” he muttered into her hair, and took a deep lungful.
That might have been a mistake.The scent poured down his throat, filled his skull.She hadn’t showered, and the glossy waves were full of concentrated woman-smell right at her crown.There was the burnt tinge of anger as well, and underneath it, the yellowish tang of outright terror.
Stay focused.“Easy,” he said again.“Sh, shhh.”
She kept fighting, but her struggles were running out of steam.No wonder, she hadn’t even been fed yet.
“Erik?”A mild inquiry from Father.
He concentrated, and the coppery tang of her blood vanished under a roil of heavy incense-smoking sorcery.The slices on her fingers, and the bigger one on her heel, closed seamlessly.That’s better.“Sir?”
“Very good.”Ignatius stood right where he had been, a straight blade of a man with a shock of iron-colored hair, his uncollared cassock neatly hemmed a little shorter than an actual priest’s for freedom of movement.
That made two compliments since they’d brought theliraihome, which was not at all normal.Still, surviving long enough to become a Father meant knowing when to buck tradition and habit, or so their trio’s Father always said.
“Miss Stellack,” Ignatius continued, “we mean you absolutely no harm.You may not believe us, but it is the truth.”
“Oh yeah.Sure.”She drew the last word out and went limp, hanging in Erik’s arms.“You just kidnap people for fun, huh?That it?”
“You have not been kidnapped, young lady.You have been placed under guard.There is a difference.You are very important, and?—”
“If you’re wanting a ransom, you’re barking up the wrong tree.Nobody will pay for me, and if you rape me you’d better use a condom because I’m herpes-adjacent.”She surged against Erik’s hold again—he had one arm around her waist, the other across her shoulders, and it probably wasn’t good that he wanted to bury his face in her hair again and just breathe that fascinating scent in over and over until he had it memorized.“You let me go and I won’t tell the cops a thing.It’s the best offer you’ll get.”
What?Erik met Ignatius’s gaze, and he could swear the flinty old man looked… amused?
“I like her,” Jake said, with his most ingratiating grin.“Girl’s got spunk.”
