She’d tried to hold back her magic’s unavoidable reaction. Keep herself from vomiting by reciting the lines she’d say to Cason once she inevitably failed and passed out.
Her cheek still throbbed from its introduction to the ground.
She deserved a higher fall than the one from her horse.
“The book I found and Fowke, they… they confirmed something for me. Something that has terrified me for years.”Truth.“Their experiments with the obsidian haven’t worked how they wanted, but there has been a glaring side effect of mixing the obsidian into someone’s system. Making it part of them makes them vulnerable to hellthorn.”A gods-damned stroke of luckthat she’d found the details in that notebook. That Fowke had said it out loud. She tapped her collarbone. “However this shard ended up in my skin, it has the same effect as those injections. The same weakness to hellthorn plagues me.”
The words she spoke were careful. Deliberate. Said in such a specific order that Cason would have no opportunity to jump to conclusions.
It would be the right conclusion, but then she’d also be dead. It was a gamble—that the dragon cared enough about her to hesitate. He might have even considered letting her live, though that was an even more improbable hope.
She was still breathing, for now. Minus the new problem that Cason might havenotbeen breathing.
The fire wielder’s face was a mask, eyes unreadable. No flicker of emotion or confusion or even counting.
What would she say if he just… asked her? If he looked her in the eyes and asked the question.
Do you have shadow magic?
She knew what she’d say. Without a doubt. And now she wanted to vomit again.
“You…” Cason’s voice cracked. His jaw set and teeth bared.
Brela braced for the words. Braced for the impact of fire and lightning.
She should have braced for something else.
Cason slugged her shoulder, knocking her sideways as he hissed. “You could have died.”
Brela rubbed her arm and blinked up at him, gaping at the anger and concern flashing in his eyes.
Well, shit. That was slightly unexpected. She had to be hallucinating, right?
A throb of pain skittered from her skull down her spine, stomach roiling again. Very real.
Not hallucinating, then.
Brela swallowed. “I had healing stones. I was never in any real danger.”
Lie.She felt like death.
“The crunching. The spring scent…” He growled at the realization and pushed off the ground, fists squeezing as he paced. “No wonder Elias and Farrah were pissed at you. No wonder you got sick at the auction with Gerrart. No wonder Elias chucked that hellthorn into the fire and flipped me off after the Wraturo.”
Cason swore at himself for not seeing it sooner, and then the rest of his rant became background noise.
Brela grimaced as another shiver of burning pain rippled through her veins. Gods, she just wanted this fabric off her skin. Wanted her skin off her bones and her hair off her head. Everythinghurt.
She couldn’t have blinked for more than half a second, but when she opened her eyes, Cason was squatting in front of her.
She sucked in a breath. “If you’re going to punch me again, I will literally trade you three punches for every one if you wait until I’m not sick.”
“Why the hells didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
Brela fought the urge to recoil at the tone… and the reverberating echo of his voice. “How could I explain something I didn’t understand?” She shook her head slowly. “Cason, nothing about this shard being stuck in me has ever made sense… but now that we’ve seen what they’re doing? Those injections…” Rubbing her collarbone, she couldn’t help the sob that escaped her throat. “They areexperimentingon my people. Torturing them and breaking them and…” Tears ran. “What if… what if I was one of them?”
“Brela, I…” Cason’s eyes flickered, and then he dropped to his knees and pulled her into his chest. Arms tightening around her shoulders, he buried his forehead against her neck. She tried and failed to hold back her grunt of pain. Cason grimaced and leaned away. “Sorry, it’s just…whywould you go into that place when you knew it could kill you? We could have come up with a different plan.”
She wiped at her eyes. “There was no other way and you know it.” Sniffing, she rolled her neck. “I knew the consequences, but finding this information was too important.”
