Hoping he wouldn’t try to attack her, Gus reached for his cuffs again.“I’m surprised too.”
A wry chuckle left Caius as he closed his eyes and sagged back into his cuffs.
“Don’t fall asleep.We don’t have a lot of time before they arrive,” Gus warned.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.A couple of Tuann.I heard them talking.”
The flash of bloodthirst that came from Caius made Gus pause.“You’re not going to try to kill me, are you?”
Caius’s smirk still contained a charisma that Gus would have thought him too tired to bother with.“You’re safe from me, little false wanderer.”
“Oh, lovely.Another nickname.”
Caius mumbled something in Tuann that Gus didn’t catch, preoccupied as she was with managing his cuffs.They were proving much more difficult to remove than she’d expected.
The grains of time were quickly trickling through the hourglass.
Just when Gus thought she was on the cusp of success, seconds from opening the cuffs, Caius jerked his wrists away from her.
“What are you doing?Stop that,” Gus demanded.
“No.”
Taken aback, Gus scowled.“What do you mean no?”
“Traitor.”Caius’s words slurred slightly from the effort of speaking as his energy began to flag.“Have to know.”
Gus stared at the idiot in front of her.Did he not realize the condition he was in?
He was barely conscious and hanging on by a thread.Any information he hoped to glean would quickly follow him to the grave.
Because that was where he was heading if he stayed here.He lacked the strength to fight off a dust mite, let alone the oshota she expected to round the corner any second now.
Determined, Gus reached for his cuffs a second time.“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
It was official.She’d decided.Idiots who thought they were invincible despite all evidence to the contrary didn’t deserve a say in their own rescue.She would just do what she came here to do.Caius’s cooperation or not.
“I came all this way for you.”
Okay, that was a bit of a lie.She was here more for Anandra than Caius.But close enough.
“And you want me to just leave without you?Do you know the kind of risks I took to get to this point?”
She’d called in one of her lieutenants.Flown into a section of space only the craziest of humans ever braved and then played whack-a-mole with a bunch of Tsavitee.All of whom could have ended her if the slightest thing went wrong.
And this was the thanks she got?Him saying “no”, “turn around”, “go home”?
She’d be flabbergasted but she was too damn irritated.
Caius opened his eyes, the murderous look in them bringing Gus to a sharp stop.
“Are you serious?”she asked in disbelief, trying to ignore the tiny sting of betrayal that accompanied that look of his.The realization that Caius was perfectly capable of killing her if she got in his way.
It wasn’t like she’d expected much from Caius—or people in general.They weren’t friends or comrades.They were barely more than strangers.From that perspective, it made sense that he’d place his agenda above everything else—including her life.
It was a grim reminder of what Caius was.House Roake’s commander.A man whose loyalty to its Overlord transcended the possible and edged into legend territory.He was the House’s golden boy and he would do anything, even die, for its glory and honor.
