I groan, the sound of the man’s voice more painful than the blows. Ezryn saving meagain? I’ll never live this down. “Leave, Ezryn. I’ve got this handled.”
“Like the grave you do,” he snarls. “You look like shit.”
“Yes, yes.” I’d roll my eyes if it didn’t send shooting pain through my skull.
“Leave us to our business, interloper,” Mikkel cries. “This man is a demon from the Below! He must be destroyed!”
“And who are you to cast judgment?” Ezryn says, voice gravelly. He stands over me, stance defensive. “This man is under my protection. If you want him, you’ll have to go through me.”
“And who are you, stranger?” Berit snarls.
“I have had many names,” he says. “Not all of my choosing. As this man has been named not of his choosing. He is not the Prince of Thorns. Find and slay your monsters elsewhere.”
“Then who is he?” the red-haired man says.
Ezryn’s cape snaps in the wind, and I blow an exasperated cloud of breath out into the air. “His name,” Ezryn says lowly, “is Caspian.”
“Caspian?” the young boy repeats.
It’s…unfamiliar to him.
Of course it is.
So many of these people don’t know my real name. They know me as the Prince of Thorns. No true title but the moniker the fae of the surface realms dubbed me with. They chose a name for their monster, and I wore it like a crown.
By the shuffle of feet and a few muttering words, I take it the ruffians are scuffling away. Even without his armor, Ezryn’s not someone to contend with. I sigh again, staring up at the sky, letting the soft flakes of snow fall over my cheeks, hot with blood.
“Can you stand?” Ezryn turns and offers me a hand.
I don’t take it. “Can you stop doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Saving me.” I push myself up and spit blood. “I swear, you were more bearable when you were trying to kill me.”
Ezryn tilts his head in a familiar way. “But…I had no choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to save you,” Ezryn says slowly.
I’ve truly puzzled the metalhead on this one. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” he demands, then reaches down and yanks me up by my arm.
I cry out, clutching my rib. I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s definitely bruised.
Ezryn grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him. His dark brows lower over his even darker eyes. “You’re my family. We always protect our family.”
I stop moving, stuck in his gaze. Wind whips his hair away from his face. Scruff lines his jaw, and his hair curls around his tattered ears.Family.
He shoves my shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that. Because you’re my family doesn’t mean we’re friends. I can protect people I don’t like as well as I can people I love.”
“Yeah,” I say, but I’m still staring at him. He was like Kel’s brother growing up. By the time Kel came to live with me in Cryptgarden, I’d won Dayton and Farron over with charm and jokes and stories. But I’d never felt so much as a warm gaze from Ezryn.
Was it possible that the way he looked at me now…when he said the word…
Family.
