Finn called for Diedre once more, and Kay repeated her demand, but Riley wasn’t listening anymore. Kay was a Guardian.HerGuardian. She could trust her to protect them while she worked.
James’s eyes rolled back as he trembled, muscles twitching as he gave a low groan. Riley gently laid her hands on his chest and let the entire rest of the world fade away until her focus concentrated entirely on James.
Every moment of her time as the senior Healer for London—and before that, the long days she’d spent working her way up through the northern Circles, all while volunteering as care support in some of the roughest inner-city hospitals—had given her all the knowledge she needed. This was where she’d always fitted; with a patient.
James moaned, and she coiled her Shadows tightly around him, holding his head safely off the paving as he retched. Letting her senses spread out, she followed her Shadows through his body, looking for the cause of his seizure.
There it was. Something foreign ran through his blood, spreading out from his belly and burning into his esophagus. Something like… poison.
There was a flurry at the mansion door, and suddenly Kay and Zach were right on top of her with Emma by their side, all of them gripping Shadow weapons.
“Riley?” Kay’s voice was threaded with tension. “Diedre just got here.”
Damn it all.
James turned his head and vomited. A strange pasty mix of bile and blood-tinged, half-eaten… were those berries? Riley didn’t know, and there wasn’t time to figure it out. It would be better not to lift him—but it would be even better not to be dragged into Gordon’s house by Diedre.
Riley wrapped her Shadows around James, weaving a bracing network of Healing and support as she stood and gestured to Zach. “Kay’s right. We have to go.”
“Right now,” Kay growled. “Before they get anyone else down here.”
“Are you sure?” Zach demanded. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
“He’s been poisoned,” Riley explained quickly as she worked to keep her Shadows protecting James. “I’ll treat him while we run.”
“He’ll be fine,” Emma reassured Zach. “Riley has him now.”
Her words broke through to whatever had been holding Zach back and a second later he threw James over his shoulder with a grunt. Kay flung up a wall of glittering Shadow blades, spinning and gleaming in midnight blue while Zach unspooled an ocean-colored Shadow barrier for them to hide behind.
Their sudden action unlocked the strange stalemate, and Finn shouted angrily. He hurled a tsunami of olive-green Shadows, trying to hold them. Within seconds his ropes were joined by Brayden’s red hues and Diedre’s navy blue, but their Shadows worked against one another, fighting and battling for dominance almost as much as they sought to encircle Riley and James. And they were no match for Kay and Zach’s seamless defense.
Kay flung up her hands and easily cut through the churning Shadow ropes, following up with a flick of her wrist that sent a swarm of angry blue bees streaming toward the Councilors, while Zach smoothly led their Circle further and further from Gordon’s door, his shield never wavering.
Brayden called out in outrage, but he was too slow to act. He, Finn, and Diedre were soon smothered in Kay’s swarm and became distracted from their true target, focused only on batting away the Shadow creatures.
Had they worked together, it might have been different. But they clearly were not—and never would be—a triad. And they were all far too used to grabbing all the glory for themselves to ever come together as a team.
“Run!” Zach grunted once James was safely in his grip.
Riley ran beside them, leaving Kay to fling up another row of protective shields, working with Zach to form a defensive wall behind them.
Riley didn’t even try to join the fight. Instead, she concentrated all her energy on James. His system was riddled with toxins, his stomach full of something acidic and foul, and it took everything she had to keep sprinting forward while she focused. She could feel his shallow breaths, twitching muscles, and acidic nausea as if they were in her own body. Cold sweat prickled down her back. Or perhaps down his. All she knew was that the foul grit of poison was invading her Shadows as she poured them into James.
They turned the corner just as Ethan pulled up, and they piled into the back of the car in an ungainly mass of sweating bodies. Riley slid until her back was against the door, then cradled James’s head on her lap as he muttered something. His words were unintelligible but threaded through with pain and misery.
His Shadows fluttered against hers, surging weakly toward her, twining slowly around hers as if they knew her. As if they wanted her.
They swung hard around a curve, Kay cursing as she tried to climb into the front seat, and James groaned long and low, his pale face gleaming with unhealthy sweat.
Riley dragged in a breath and forced herself to concentrate. She had to get the poison out of his system, but she didn’t even know what it was. The berries he’d vomited were too chewed and partially digested to be of any help. She had to work entirely by instinct. She settled her hand on his cheek and sent her Shadows even deeper.
James’s Shadows immediately responded, clinging to hers, following hers.
How many times had their Shadows almost joined… but not quite? How many times had he drawn his Shadows back, focusing on overwhelming her with physical pleasure until she was so wrung out that she fell asleep in his arms? And then the next day, it seemed a silly thing to mention. To create problems where none existed.
She couldn’t think about that now.
She could sense a toxic lump in his belly, and she concentrated all her effort on finding its signature and reversing it. Normally she could hold her focus. But this was James. It took everything she had to calm herself enough to think.
