Chapter 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 throat turned 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.
He lifted Ire half off the ground, using everything: back, shoulders, hips. Ire slammed an elbow down into Blake’s back, but Blake simply adjusted his grip and pivoted, slamming Ire sideways into the dirt with a sickening thud.
Ire tried to scramble up. Blake kicked him in the side of the knee with a steel-toed boot. Full force. The crack rang out clear. The joint dislocated, and Ire bellowed, but Blake was already moving.
“You dared to take her?”
His voice was deathly calm, more terrifying than if he’d yelled.
Blake crouched low, eyes wild.
This time, he didn’t use his body.
The metal of Ire’s skin, his one weapon, suddenly pulled tight. Blake squeezed his skin and bones and body.
“You touched her,” Blake rasped, voice barely human. “You caged her. Beat her. I warned you. You will die for touching what’s mine.”
Ire’s lips parted, but there was no air to make a sound. He was bleeding from the mouth. He fell back and Blake followed, pushing his booted foot atop his chest, pressing—the metal was killing Ire slowly, agonizingly.
Blake studied him. Then, with a slow, inexorable motion, he twisted the metal further. The wet grind of bone and iron meeting made my stomach turn, but I didn’t look away. I wouldn’t look away.
“This is for Rubi,” Blake murmured, and the metal tightened, sinking deeper into muscle, making Ire sob silently.
Blake settled atop Ire, knees astride him, as his blade—his brother’s thundervein blade—reappeared in his hand.
“Now, tell me who—”
A slice through the air echoed in the space, a blade lodging into Ire’s throat before he choked on red blood spilling from his neck and mouth.
Blake, furious, tore his eyes over his left shoulder to where Malissa strutted through the wreckage of the room, her other knife still in her hand.
“Damn it, Malissa,” Blake cursed. “We needed to question him.”
“Please. He’s an oaf. We both know he knows nothing.
Besides, you got your Pair back,” Malissa said.
“Maybe worry about her, considering she looks a few seconds from death.” Blake spun toward me, eyeing where the collar still hung around my neck, the only metal restraint that hadn’t been broken by his magic.
“Holy gods,” a low voice murmured, and my eyes shot to the doorway, where Quinn stood over the wreckage of Ire’s body.
Jace’s face was hard and unreadable. Then his eyes lifted to me, taking in the collar, the marks on my skin. His breath caught, and his jaw tightened. He took a single step toward me before stopping, his fists clenching at his sides, fury radiating from him.
I hadn’t seen Blake move, but he was there, wrapping his cloak around me with the utmost tenderness. His nostrils flared as he looked over the rune-engraved collar still around my throat.
He concentrated upon it, and I felt a sharp snap of pain, crying out and pushing away from him suddenly.
“Stop, please,” I begged, hating my own weakness, but too tired to pretend I wasn’t in agony. Whatever he’d tried to do to the metal at my neck hadn’t worked. It hurt me more. I tried to picture encasing the collar in a shield again, but it didn’t work, as if the collar had adapted to my defense.
His eyes burned.
“Can you help her?” another voice said, and I blinked my eyes at Calla—touched that she had come. She knelt by my side, lifting my head to her lap. “Merciful Nuwa—you have to do something, Blake.”
“I know,” he snapped at her, something dark breaking loose in his voice, a deep well of pain that had ripped open. “Rubi, love. I’m sorry—”
“Blake, please,” I begged, cutting off into a cry as the pain burrowed further. I jerked up and away from him again. “Don’t—”
“I can’t,” he said, horror threading through every word. Another burst of pain from the collar around my neck had me screaming again.
“What’s happening to her?” a familiar voice cried. I thought it was Quinn, but I didn’t have the strength to open my eyes and find out. “Ribbon girl?”
“The collar,” Calla said, quiet. Heartbroken, the sound of tears in her words. “It’s dark magic. Blake can’t break it.”