Knox stops walking. He turns.
“You need to release the witch from the contract,” he says. “When this is over.”
Dimitri looks at him. The pleasant expression doesn’t change, but something behind it goes very still.
“I’m sorry?”
“The kid didn’t know what he was doing. He was twenty years old and terrified and in over his head. Whatever deal he made, he didn’t understand the terms. You need to release him.”
Dimitri laughs. It’s cold, nothing like the bright startled sound on the cathedral steps. This laugh is old and empty and has seen the inside of places Knox doesn’t want to imagine.
“You don’t know how the world works, little Templar.” Dimitri’s red eyes are flat. “The boy summoned me. He reached across dimensions and pulled me out of my existence and into his, because he wanted something. He asked for help. And he’ll get it. I always honor my contracts. But when the debt comes due, and it will come due, I will collect. That’s the deal. That’s how it’s always worked.”
“He’s a child.”
“He’s twenty. Old enough to cast. Old enough to bleed. Old enough to face the consequences of what he summoned.”
“Dimitri—”
“I will destroy him,” Dimitri says softly. “Not because I’m cruel. Not because I enjoy it. Because that is the nature of what I am, and what he invited into his life. And no amount of green-eyed earnestness is going to change that.”
Knox grabs the front of Dimitri’s shirt.
It’s instinct, the same instinct that drove him to punch through a holy fire barrier, the same stubborn immovable refusal to let something terrible happen when he has the power to stop it. His fist closes in the charred fabric and he pulls, dragging Dimitri down toward his level, and his mouth opens to say something, a threat, a plea, a demand, he doesn’t know which.
Dimitri moves.
His hands close around Knox’s wrists and he spins him, fast and fluid, years of predatory reflex compressed into a single motion, and slams Knox face-first into the stone wall of thecorridor. Knox’s cheek hits cold stone and his arms are pinned above his head and Dimitri’s body is pressed against his back, solid and warm and so much bigger than him, and the bond detonates with sensation that Knox cannot parse and cannot control and cannot, for the first time, suppress.
Chapter 10
The thrill is immediate.
It hits Dimitri the moment Knox’s cheek meets stone, a burst of nervousness and shock flooding through the bond, bright and electric, Knox’s composure fracturing for one delicious second before his training kicks in and tries to plaster it back together. Dimitri drinks it in. He presses closer, pinning Knox flat against the wall with his body, and the size difference is obscene from this angle, Knox’s narrow frame dwarfed by Dimitri’s, his wrists caught in Dimitri’s hands and held against the cold stone above his head.
His wrists. Fuck, his wrists.
Even this, just this, just the circle of Dimitri’s fingers around those fine bones, sends that same scalding electricity arcing between them. It races up Dimitri’s arms and pools at the base of his spine, and through the bond he can feel the mirror of it in Knox, a twin current of heat that the Templar is fighting to suppress with every ounce of his iron discipline.
He’s not fighting, though. That’s the thing. Knox’s body is rigid, every muscle locked, but he’s not struggling. He’s not reaching for a blessing. He’s just standing there, pressed into the wall, breathing in short controlled bursts, his blond hair falling forward over his shoulders, and Dimitri can feel through the bond that what Knox is experiencing right now is not fear and not anger but something much more dangerous and much harder to compartmentalize.
Dimitri leans in. He dips his head until his lips are beside Knox’s ear, close enough that his breath stirs the loose strands of gold hair at Knox’s temple.
“What are you willing to trade,” Dimitri murmurs, “for the boy’s safety?”
Knox inhales sharply. The sound is small and involuntary and it goes straight through Dimitri. He can feel Knox’s pulse hammering against his fingers where they circle his wrists, rapid, frantic, completely at odds with the controlled stillness of the rest of him. The bond is a riot of sensation: Knox’s nervousness, Dimitri’s hunger, something hot and unnamed that belongs to both of them and neither of them.
They stay there. One second. Two. The hallway is empty. The stone is cold. Knox’s skin is warm under Dimitri’s hands, and Dimitri is thinking about turning him around, about seeing those green eyes up close, about finding out what Knox’s mouth tastes like with that split lip still healing, and the wanting is so vivid and so immediate that it pours through the bond without his permission and Knox makes a sound, barely audible, a caught breath that could be protest or could be something else entirely, and Dimitri’s grip tightens on his wrists and—
A blessed fist hits Dimitri in the ribs.
The impact is staggering. Consecrated force detonates against his side, holy energy ripping through the point of contact and sending Dimitri stumbling sideways. He loses his grip on Knox’swrists, loses his footing, hits the opposite wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Pain blooms across his ribs, bright and burning, and he hasn’t even gotten his feet under him before a hand fists in his collar and hauls him upright.
A Templar is in his face.
Not Knox. This one is new. He’s tall, as tall as Dimitri, which is unusual for a human, with dark scraggly hair that falls into a face built for fury. His eyes are dark and murderous, and the fist in Dimitri’s collar is shaking, not with fear but with the barely restrained urge to hit him again. He’s wearing a Templar coat, charcoal gray, and the blessing rings on his right hand are blazing white.
Dimitri looks into those murderous eyes and wonders, with detached academic interest, if this Templar kills him whether Knox will suffer too.
