Page 22 of The Witch They Crave

I'll think about that silence later, when I have a skull that works. Aamon goes still, his wrist an inch from my mouth, still bleeding. Something crosses his face that I'm in no shape to read and won't forget anyway.

He pulls his arm back.

"Do it," he says. Flat. It costs him something I can hear go.

Then Kage's bleeding wrist is at my mouth. His other hand comes under the broken back of my head, and he's careful with me. I blink slowly, open my mouth, and his blood hits my tongue. Bright. Hot. Alive.

The grey around my vision clears and things speed up to their normal cadence.

The sharp pain in my skull pulls back, folds, closes. The bone knits. The cold goes out of my hair. The room sharpens one edge at a time. And under it, through the place I'm drinking him down, something catches—a tether, a low hum, the rope he told me about, gone taut again. Except this time I feel my own end of it. For the first time I understand what he's been holding by himself.

I come back to myself with my fist in his collar and his blood on my mouth and his eyes six inches from mine, and neither of us bothers pretending we’re not deeply entwined in each other.

He knows now. I watch it land—that I wanted him, in the one second I had nothing left to lie with, that when it came to a wrist at my mouth I picked his. Whatever was held back in him a week ago is gone. What's left has decided something.

"There she is," he says, low, just for me.

I sit up too fast and the world holds. Healed. Whole. The blood in my hair going tacky, and not one wound under it as I reach back to rub.

Aamon's right here, still crouched where he offered me his wrist and got turned down for it. His head's lowered. His eyes are down—on the floor, on his own hands, anywhere but me—like a wounded thing that's decided the safest thing to do is not move. The bite on his wrist has already closed; all that's left is the dark smear of the blood I wouldn't take, drying on his skin. His shirt's torn at the shoulder. He holds himself so still it looks like it hurts.

"He's leaving," Aamon says.

"No," says Kage. "I'm not."

"You're not authorized to be within a mile of her." Aamon's voice is flat, back under control, and that's almost worse than the snarl. "She is under council sentence. There is no visitation. None. You broke in and put down a council enforcer to get to a prisoner a week out from her inquest, and if the wrong person hears about it, that's not a headache for me—that's evidence. That's the thing they hang her with. You want to help her? Walk up those stairs and never come back down them."

"That's rich." Kage's grin is gone. "You're going to lecture me about what put her in danger tonight? You. The one who came down those stairs already spoiling for it." He rolls his neck, slow, and steps off the wall. "I didn't throw the first punch, warden. You did. She cracked her head because you couldn't stand the sight of me near her and you lost your legendary composure over it. So don't stand in the wreckage you made and tell me I'm the liability."

The air pulls tight again. Aamon goes still—that still—and for a second I think they’re about to start trading blows again.

But the inquest part landed for Kage. I watch it get through where nothing else did. Kage's jaw works, and he doesn't argue, because there's no arguing it.

He knows he wasn’t supposed to be down here. He has no real defense.

I can't let him leave like this, though. Not without getting him alone again for a second.

"Aamon," I murmur low. He turns, and the full weight of his look lands on me and I nearly lose my nerve. "Let me talk to him. Two minutes. Alone."

"No."

"Aamon…"

"Absolutely not."

"I'm asking you." I hold his eyes, which I can never do, and I do it now. "Two minutes, and then he goes. I'll send him up those stairs myself, you have my word. I do need to say something to him before he goes. Please."

Aamon looks like he wants to grab me, shake me, and scream in my face. But his shoulders drop, along with his gaze. I know he’ll give me what I want–even if I have to pay for it later.

"Two minutes." His jaw barely moves. "You send him up. If he's not vanished when I come back, I’ll send him to the afterlife." One more look at Kage—flat murder—and he steps back over the threshold. I hear him climb into the dark. Not far. Never far. Just far enough.

Kage waits until he’s sure Aamon can’t hear us.

"Cal—"

"Listen. Fast." I get a hand around his forearm. "The rune on my old door. The tracking anchor? It was Leopold. Weeks before the Revel. He marked me, gave himself a key to my house, and he had my sealed file—the council one, the one nobody outside the council touches." I don’t have time to beat around the bush. "He wants something from me. I don't know what. And I can't do a damn thing about it from down here."

The cold rolls off him fast. "Then I'll kill him."