“Orion. Move.”
Nothing.
“Orion.”
A sleepy grunt. His arm tightens.
“If you don’t remove yourself from my person in the next three seconds, I will freeze something you’re rather attached to.”
That gets his attention. One amber eye cracks open. Takes in our position. The way his body is wrapped around mine like I’m a teddy bear he found in the dark.
His grin is insufferable.
“Aw, Kieran. I didn’t know you?—”
The bond flares.
Not the warm pulse of Ash dreaming, or the distant hum of her sleeping nearby. This is pain. Terror. The kind that slices through magical connections like a blade through silk.
Orion is off me and on his feet before I finish processing the sensation. I’m half a second behind him, both of us grabbing pants, not bothering with shirts, moving on instinct burned into us through centuries of battle.
“Never speak of this,” I snap as I reach the door.
“What, me cuddling you?” He’s trying for humor but his voice shakes. “Because I gotta say, you’re a very adequate little spoon?—”
“Orion.”
We thunder down the stairs. I take them three at a time and nearly break my ankle on the landing. Don’t care.
The tavern’s main room is lit by candles that shouldn’t be burning and magic that makes my shadows recoil. Salt lines the floor in a perfect circle. Rosemary scattered at the edges. And inside?—
Ash.
On her knees. Blood streaming from her nose, her ears. Her verynakedskin flickers between human and something else. Sage green bleeding through, pink and silver hair, ears sharpening and then rounding again. Like her body can’t decide what it wants to be.
The three goddesses stand at points around the circle. Morrigan in front. Badb and Macha flanking. Their eyes are wrong, Morrigan’s gone storm-grey, her sisters’ pure black.
And they’re hurting her.
“What,” I say, and my voice has dropped into the register that makes courtiers flinch, “are you doing to her?”
I don’t remember deciding to threaten three war goddesses. My shadows are already moving, pooling at my feet, reaching toward the circle like they want to strangle someone.
Let them try.
Orion doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s already at the barrier, palms flat against the invisible wall, fire erupting from his skin. The flames hit ancient magic and bounce. He snarls, tries again. The salt doesn’t even flicker.
“Stripping the glamour,” Morrigan says, but there’s confusion on her face. Uncertainty. The Morrigan doesn’t do uncertainty. “Or attempting to. It’s not...responding as expected.”
“Responding as—” Orion slams both fists against the barrier. “She’s bleeding. From her face. Does that seem like a successful glamour removal to you?”
His palms are smoking where they touch the salt-magic. Burning himself. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Or doesn’t care.
Inside the circle, Ash coughs. Spits blood onto the salt. Her hands are trembling as she pushes herself upright, and her spine straightens one vertebra at a time.
She is stunning. Absolutely breathless in a way she never should have had to be.
