I heard her furious roar just before she crashed through the bolted door. She leapt into the room like a comet, the heavy door lying broken in her wake. She swiped Ire with full force.
He flew backward across the room and hit the stone wall with an audible crack.
Flame stalked forward, shoulders rippling, teeth bared in growling fury. She planted herself between us, chest heaving, golden eyes fixed on him.
He stood up and cracked his neck. “I’m going to kill you both.”
Flashing, he pulled his metal skin around himself and slammed into Flame. She was still weakened but utterly determined. He crashed into her side again, trying to knock her away.
Suddenly, the collar at my throat pulsed and my body went limp, as if I were dying. My shoulders and wrists screamed as they bore my full weight.
Stay awake, Rubi, came Flame’s slow, drugged voice.
I don’t know what’s happening to me, I moaned. I wasn’t sure where I was sending the message—to Flame or Blake or Kingsolver. Everything felt heavy as Ire released my chains from the hook and I collapsed with a loud cry.
He drew a sharp blade against my throat, just above the collar.
“If your bitch of a tyger makes one wrong move—”
There was a thunder of paws, the splintering of wood, the roar of untamed fury, and Ire spun, still holding me, to look out the window.
The stables exploded open as a stampede of tygers burst inside, a force of raw, magnificent power. Tygers of every shade were moving as one unstoppable tide, their eyes gleaming, their fangs bared. Tygers I’d never seen before, but also Xane. Venom.
And at their head, like a warlord descending from legend, was Kingsolver, and riding atop him, Blake.
49
My Blake.
I cried out in relief, but Ire cut it short with his hand on my jaw.
Blake’s bronze hair caught the torchlight, his sharp eyes sweeping the chaos with deadly intent. The air around him shimmered with power, a magnetic storm barely held in check.
She is here, in the keep, I heard Flame shout to the assembled tygers.
Kingsolver shot like an arrow toward the entrance to the keep and moments later burst through the mangled doorway. When Blake spotted me—collared and chained, Ire’s knife at my throat and his other arm roughly around my waist—a raw, violent wrath crackled in the air around him, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Metal screamed. The chains rattling against my skin suddenly pulled taut, vibrating with an unseen force before the manacles on my wrists exploded off me as the knife Ire had held at my throatturned on him. I dropped to the ground with a quiet thud, unable to keep myself upright.
Ire stood in front of me now, moving into a battle pose, though fear rolled off him in waves.
He was terrified of the Twin Blade.
Blake swung down from Kingsolver in one fluid motion, his boots hitting the ground with a heavy finality.
His gaze burned through me, sweeping over my exposed skin, the bruises where Ire had struck me, the raw red marks on my wrists from the restraints. Ice blue eyes lingered for a moment on my face, where I’m sure the skin was red and rapidly swelling.
“Rubi,” he said, his voice like a balm to my pain.
“Blake. I’m—”
Ire roared like a rabid animal and charged toward him. His skin shimmered, metallic and impenetrable, the magic already hardened over every inch of his body.
Blake didn’t even raise a fist as Ire reached him. Just twisted at the last second so Ire hit nothing but air. Then Blake slammed into Ire with the full force of his body, both arms locking around his waist, and drove him backward like a battering ram.
Ire staggered, surprised, but his heels caught, and the men crashed into a table nearby, the wood crumbling beneath their combined weight.
Blake didn’t let go.
