The pen on the desk. Now this.
"Hub is clear," Marcellus says. "Perimeter locked. Wolves on the exits."
Julian's voice. Behind me. Sharp.
"Witch signature. Behind us. Move."
I turn.
The air warps. A ripple, like heat above asphalt, except this ripple moves toward me and the bitter chemical smell from the corridor intensifies until it burns my sinuses.
The strike comes low and hard. Invisible until it's almost on me.
Maximus's shadows launch from his body across the room. They hit the corridor between me and the strike.
And between the darkness and the strike, Julian.
He's already facing the strike. He's crossing the space between me and the witch-strike with his arms raised and his body turned sideways and the shadows wrapping around him like a cocoon that isn't thick enough.
The shadows absorb most of the impact.
The magic hits Julian in the head. A sound like a whipcrack. His body jerks. His legs give. He goes down.
No.
I'm on the floor beside him before the echo fades.
His eyes are open. Unfocused. Blood at his left temple where the magic burned through. His breathing is shallow and ragged and his skin has gone gray.
"Julian."
His mouth moves. He's trying to speak. Nothing comes out.
"Stay with me. Don't close your eyes."
My hand goes flat against his chest. My other hand goes to his forehead. The wound at his temple is spreading. The magic is eating through his flesh, turning it black at the edges, slow and deliberate. Ash where skin used to be. I can see the bone underneath. The blackening is moving toward his eye. Reaching it.
He's dying. Right here. Right now.
Maximus is above me. His shadows are spread flat across every surface around us. The warped air is gone. Whatever hit Julian came and went.
The bond healed me once. After Konstantin's facility, when my ribs were cracked and I was dying, the bond pulled energy from Maximus into me without either of us choosing it. Bondmate to bondmate.
I don't know if the healing will work on anyone else.
I try anyway.
I pull from the bond. From the place where Maximus's energy and mine meet. I push warmth into Julian, against the magic that's eating him alive.
The warmth moves through my palms and into him. My strength goes with it. Arms first, then shoulders, then my legs start to shake.
My vision narrows at the edges. The light shrinks to a tunnel with Julian's face at the center of it.
The blackening at his temple slows. Stops. Then reverses. Ash becomes raw flesh. Raw flesh becomes skin. The bone disappears under new tissue, closing like a door shutting.
Julian's hand comes up and grips my wrist. His eyes focus. The right one is clear. The left has gone gray.
"Stop," he says. His accent is thicker than I've ever heard it. "That's enough."
