Noam had to get out of here. Had to get somewhere public, somewhere with ... witnesses.
He couldn’t make it down the stairs on his own. The hardwood was slippery underfoot, each lurch down its own exquisite torture.
Noam grabbed onto the railing with one sweaty hand and heaved himself up, bracing his heel against metal. The stairwell weaved before him, his vision just oil paints running together.
He hissed in a breath and heaved himself over the ledge and into free fall.
Noam mustered enough magnetism to catch himself mere feet from the ground floor, slowing his fall enough to keep the collision from being lethal. Even still, judging from the wretched scream that tore from his throat and the sharp-split pain in his side, he’d broken another several ribs.
His head was on fire. Noam crawled across the landing to the door, hand slipping on the handle once, twice, before he managed to drag himself back up onto his feet and pull down.
Very distantly, he sensed the wards on Lehrer’s apartment crumble and fall.
Noam stumbled into the atrium. At this hour the crowds were thin, most of the tourists and government employees having gone home for the day. But there were still enough people weaving between the separate wings of the complex that Noam felt—
Not safe. But.
He wasso close.
He kept his gaze locked on the doors to the back street, dragging himself step by step across the marble floor with his broken wrist clutched to his chest. Already people had started to stare. Noam gritted his teeth and tried to lift his head, to walk a steady gait. It was all but impossible.
A familiar glint of magic cut into Noam’s awareness right as he made it to the far side, the guards pushing open the doors. He looked back, over one shoulder.
Across the atrium, Lehrer was a still figure in a gray suit, a solitary pillar around which the hubbub of evening traffic swirled and eddied and passed by. Their gazes met as Noam stepped out onto the street.
Lehrer lifted a hand—not farewell.
A promise.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
DARA
After Noam left Dara—left, on purpose, left for good—Dara had gone back into the bar and slapped a handful of argents onto the table for Leo and taken a bottle of bourbon in trade.
Ames at least knew to leave well enough alone.
Dara paced the short length of his apartment, that bottle waiting on his dresser and his shirt buttons torn half-open—it was too hot in here,too hotfor midwinter, for all snow still fell outside the window and the radiator spat useless steam against the plaster wall. Dara circled his thumb and forefinger around his wrist and dragged it up his forearm, checking how far he could get.
Not far enough. He’d gained weight.
Dara wished he could strip off his skin, his life. Shed it like spent currency and fade into oblivion.
Oblivion was what that bottle would buy him, when he finally gave in.
And he would give in. He knew it. The bottle knew it. It stood there on the dresser and reveled in that knowledge, mocking him.
Damn it.
Dara broke pace, crossing to the dresser and tearing the foil from around the bottle’s neck, yanking the cork free. He poured himself a sloppy dram and stared down at the whiskey that spilled over the rim of his glass and wet his fingers. He’d played a terrible game and won an even worse prize.
This was Álvaro’s fault. So much in the ruins of Dara’s life was Álvaro’s fault.
He left the bourbon there and spun on his heel to pace another lap.
Outside the snow blanketed the city inch by inch, silencing it under so many layers of cold and ice. Dara pressed his brow to the frigid windowpane and stared down at the grim street, darting like a sooty line toward downtown.
He didn’t know why he kept making the same mistake.
