Not that Noam was gonna stick around to enjoy it.
There was nothing left to say. He spun on his heel and started off toward the front door once more—made it two steps before Lehrer’s hands found his bruised ribs, drawing him back.
“Stop,” Noam said—gasped, really, because his lungs barely had the capacity for speech. All he could think was Dara’s voice in his head,He’ll hurt you. “Stop,” Noam said again, twisting enough to look Lehrer in the eye, both his hands balling into fists. “I—”
“—have a headache?” Lehrer finished for him.
Noam’s protests were dead leaves in his throat. And Lehrer still hadn’t let him go, Lehrer’s magic sparking off his skin and against Noam’s, tiny oscillations of pain.
A sharp breath, and Noam jabbed his heel against Lehrer’s instep, missed. Lehrer’s hand abandoned his ribs to twist in Noam’s hair instead. He used that grip to shove Noam forward, Noam’s feet stumbling under his own weight as Lehrer slammed him headfirst against the wall.
White light exploded behind Noam’s eyes, bright and loud as a gunshot. The agony cascaded from his face to his skull, down the rope of his spine to tingle in the tips of his fingers. He barely choked in a breath before Lehrer thrust him forward again.
The second impact was like shattering every bone in his body. Something hot and wet coursed down Noam’s cheek, tasted like metal in his mouth.
Noam’s legs gave out. Lehrer caught him with a quick arm around the stomach before he could hit the floor, heaving him upright and pressing him there between Lehrer’s ember-hot body and the cracked wall. His breath on Noam’s neck was uneven, Lehrer’s chest heaving against Noam’s back.
Lehrer’s lips were dry as they moved against Noam’s ear, his voice dark like ash.
“I bet your head hurts now, doesn’t it?”
He let go. Noam sagged against the wall, blood dripping off his throbbing face and speckling the hardwood floor. Noam stared at it without really seeing, his hands flat against the plaster and his mind a haze of impenetrable fog.
Lehrer moved away, a shadow on the fringe of Noam’s awareness. But he was back a moment later, the edge of his coat sweeping through Noam’s peripheral vision as Lehrer pulled it on.
“I have an interview off-site,” Lehrer said curtly, as if they were discussing this over breakfast and not here in the hall with Noam blinking back tears and Wolf padding down to nudge a worried nose against Noam’s leg. “Go to the meeting tonight. Nowhere else.”
Noam sniffed. That, too, tasted like blood.
Lehrer’s footsteps retreated down the hall toward the door—but stopped halfway there.
“I will see you back here tonight at ten sharp.” Noam imagined persuasion whipping around Lehrer’s words like gold fire. “I expect you to have your priorities in order by then.”
Even after Lehrer left—after the door had fallen shut in his wake and the wards reconstituted themselves around the apartment—it took a long time for Noam to push himself up off the wall. Wolf’s pink tongue darted out to lap the blood off the floor.
“Good boy,” Noam mumbled. His mouth felt dumb and useless.
Wolf sat on his haunches and let out a soft whine.
Noam dragged a shaky hand through the fur atop Wolf’s skull and started off back down the hall toward the living room.
The whole apartment looked different now: like a reflection of the one he knew, blurry round the edges and surreal. Noam moved as if he’d been programmed to do so, toward the kitchen for ice—only then he diverted course by the door. Didn’t want to drip water on Lehrer’s floor, after all.
But when he got to the bathroom, he had to face himself in the mirror, and that more than anything else brought him careening back to earth.
The bruise on his brow was already purpling—a second mark on Noam’s cheekbone was still red, but it would darken quickly enough. The blood came from a cut on his eyebrow and a split lip, coursing down over the inflamed skin; speckled stains marred his uniform collar.
The other half of his face was pristine and unmarred, all smooth skin and sharp bone.
“Shit,” Noam whispered.
He tipped his head down and turned on the faucet, but the first splash of water on his face stung badly enough he had to grit his teeth against a scream. He thrust Lehrer’s hand towel under the stream instead, dampening it enough to press the cold terry cloth against his injuries.
Even when he lowered the towel, his face didn’t look much better. The bruises seemed angrier somehow, blood and water mixing to a pinkish fluid that dripped off his jaw and into the sink.
Noam didn’t recognize himself like this.
He should have learned healing magic. He should go to the barracks; Bethany knew healing—
