I cleared my tear-soaked throat.
“What’s wrong?” Apart from everything.
He sighed like even that pained him. “I want to sit down, but it’s your room. Your bed.”
Still so attentive to my own space.
I patted the duvet next to me. I felt a flicker of surprise radiating off him, even as his face remained stony.
He sank next to me, the weight of him bending the mattress so that I slid closer. My skin burned, either from the closeness or not enough of it.
Silence reigned between us once more.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked in a whisper, still weary of breaking the stillness.
Breakinghimeven more.
“I think I need to,” he said, voice haunted. “But I can’t. Not right now.”
I twiddled my fingers to keep from reaching out to him. “What can I do to help?”
“Distract me.” He ran his hands down his face. “I need…I need not to think about it for a moment.”
“Very well.” I licked my lips. “How long are you staying?”
“I have to leave at sunrise. The battlefield…” He shook his head. “It’s slaughter. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Are–” I licked my lips. “Are we losing?”
His silence was answer enough.
“How?” I asked, horrified. “You have the fiercest army in all of Malhaven.”
“The Serpents are working with the Borderline Bands. They’re using something that makes them harder to kill,” Ryker said, tone devoid of all the emotions I sensed coursing through him. Rage. Hopelessness. Need for vengeance. They all battled for the opportunity to drive him insane. “They have a veil that protects them. Ever heard of that?”
I shook my head. “I already told Evie. Protectorate magic doesn’t work that way.Ifsuch a spell would even exist, they’d need an almost endless source of energy to keep it going. I almost killed myself trying to conceal the voices of a few men. Nobody could protect an entire army from physical danger.”
Nobody from the Protectorate, at least.
“Dark magic, then. Dark magic holding the veil, dark magic not letting the soldiers die, dark magic protecting those fucking snakes–” He gripped the edges of the mattress and exhaled loudly. He shook his head. “How can we fight against that with normal powers?”
“Hate to be the one to tell you, but your powers are anything but normal,” I said, forcing my tone to be lighter. Almost like an invitation to pretend. Just for a little while.
The request had been to distract–and, gods, I needed it, too.
“It’s just blood.” He shrugged.
“Dax thinks we should keep our self-righteous goals, but use their miserable tactics,” I said.
“Do you believe that?”
“No. However…thinking outside the limits isn’t the same.”
“I don’t think the motive can justify the means.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “Maybe that’s why we’re losing.”
I sucked in a breath. The thought of the Blood Brotherhood’s loss cut deep. Especially since I was stuck here, unable to help with more than a few protective runes which had apparently donenothing.
“You can’t lose,” I said.
