33. Harlow #2
Henry rubs a hand over his face. “That’s why you kept the Breeder between you and Harlow. As long as it’s a threat, you can use that magic. That’s how you survived the horde alone in the woods on the ride here. They were standing between you and her.”
Gaven nods. “She and I have trained extensively on how to maneuver ourselves in a fight. Now, if we’re done exchanging secrets, what are we going to do about this mess?”
The ashes of the Breeder are the least of it. My dress is soaked in Joe’s blood, and Stefan is unconscious, bleeding from a slice along his left forearm.
“Carter, can you…” Henry gestures.
“Can I make the last twenty minutes not have happened?” he asks, a nervous pinch in his brow. “No, Hen. Afraid not. Polm’s gifts are powerful, but not that powerful. We need a strategy.”
“Drained attack?” Bryce suggests.
Henry shakes his head. “They weren’t on duty, and it makes my family look bad.”
“Training accident?” Carter says.
“This late at night?” Gaven counters. “And it still makes the Havenwoods look bad.”
“They attacked me,” I say.
Carter sighs. “That makes Henry look bad.”
My trembling from Stefan’s fear magic has stopped, but I know I don’t have much time before the adrenaline hits me.
I’m good in an emergency. It’s born out of necessity—out of years of needing to show a brave face and suffer quietly far from prying eyes.
It’s like my mind and body have learned how to postpone the panic until all the danger is gone, but the delay costs me.
When it comes on, it comes on very hard—until I’m a shaking mess, entirely unable to compose myself.
I don’t know how long I have before I fall apart completely. I need to get away from Henry and everyone else before that happens.
For the first time in my life, I wish for my sister, Electra.
She is beautiful in a cold, cruel way—much like our mother—but her blessing from Harvain gave her the ability to erase or reform memories.
I used to resent her for being granted a much less brutal gift by the same Divine.
Most of my family have blessings from Harvain.
It was part of the reason my father chose to marry my mother.
Harvain is the wildcard of the Divine. His blessings are the most unique and least predictable. They’re also highly coveted because there are fewer defenses to counteract them. I know I’m ungrateful, but I wish he’d granted me something I could control.
“How does your magic work?” I ask Carter.
Carter looks to Henry first. Bleeding woods—don’t they ever get tired of looking to him for approval? How does Henry even have such allegiance from two men who look like they could at the very least go a few rounds with him in a fighting ring?
When Henry nods, Carter looks shocked, but his gaze turns skeptical when he looks at me.
“It works a little bit different for everyone because no two gifts are exactly the same,” Carter says. “But, generally, Polm’s gifts are most effective on someone with whom you’ve established a personal connection. What Henry is asking for here is a challenge, to say the least.”
“But you can do it,” Henry says.
Carter holds up a hand. “If you could give me a second to think, I could.”
He paces back and forth a few times, then looks toward the catwalk and back at the bodies on the floor.
My hands are still tacky with drying blood. It’s a reminder that my time to escape without making a scene is dwindling. I try to think like Kellan. How would he manage a situation like this? He would never use his manipulation on someone who wasn’t asking for it.
“Could you make him believe that he hurt his friends?” I ask. “Like, could you make him stab them now and then trick his brain into thinking he’d done all this violence?”
“That is a degradation of a blessing,” Carter says, his face the picture of genuine disgust. “Just because Polm is Divine of Malice doesn’t mean his blessings have to be used for harm. Very few even have that level of power. It’s a rare gift that can force someone to do a physical act.”
Henry meets my eye, and I wonder if he’s thinking of the fight against the rebels at our engagement dinner—of Kellan forcing all those men to lie on the ground until dawn. Kellan’s magic is very powerful. It’s the reason he’s the leader of the city guard.
“Doesn’t seem rare enough in Lunameade,” I say.
All of them stare at me blankly.
“There are those who would use their blessings to—force women,” I say.
Henry’s aura billows out like an explosion in all directions. “What are you talking about?”
All three of the other men flinch.
I scoff, trying to shove down the panic and rage. “Calm down, my wolf. Not me. Women I know. Women in my community.”
This is too close for comfort. Anger claws its way up my throat, dragging something from the center of me. I take a breath, shove it all down, and level a glare at the men.
“Do you know one of the first things a girl learns when she’s young? The first thing her mother teaches her when she’s coming of age?”
None of them speak.
“How to recognize influence blessings. What the first press of it feels like—how to ground yourself so that it can’t get in deeper. I don’t imagine that men learn the same, judging from the looks on your faces. It might be rare in your circles, but it’s not rare in this world.”
Even Gaven looks chastened.
It’s a slip-up. I am slowly splintering, and I need this figured out now so I can leave this room that smells like mold and death and breathe clean air.
“Their families—” I gesture to Joe and Roland’s bodies. “They’re powerful, right?”
Henry nods. “Not as much as Stefan’s, but still very connected. ”
I scour my brain for a believable lie. “What if Joe and Roland were tired of playing sidekick? What if they wanted to take Stefan on?”
Henry frowns. “It would make more sense for them to wait until I was out of the way too, but it could work.”
“Can’t you just make him forget?” I ask.
Carter rolls his eyes and bends to check Stefan’s breathing.
“I can’t erase a memory or remove it, but I can refocus the mind on different parts of a memory.
The more you know the person, the easier they are to influence.
To know them is to understand what motivates them.
Minds want to take the path of least resistance.
But Stefan hates Henry and, by proxy, you. I’m not sure how I’d find a way in.”
I replay the few interactions I’ve had with Stefan in my mind. “He wants to fuck me.”
Henry’s jaw clenches. “And how is that relevant?”
I place a hand on his chest. “Calm down. You can’t be the bad guy, but I can. What if I make myself the slut everyone already thinks I am?”
“Absolutely not. That will humiliate me,” Henry says.
I glare at him. “And yet, somehow I’m certain your ego will survive.”
Carter and Bryce muffle nervous laughter.
“You could make him think I lured him here to seduce him. We thought it would be somewhere that we wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Harlow, no,” Henry says at the same time Carter says, “That could work.”
I push my advantage. “The people here already hate me. If anything, you’ll get sympathy.
I lured him away. We thought it would be safe here.
Joe and Roland were supposed to stand guard.
The Breeder got free of its cage. There was a fight and all of you showed up at the tail end of it.
” I turn to meet Carter’s gaze. “Could you do that?”
He gives a half-hearted shrug. “I could.”
“Absolutely not. There has to be another way,” Henry says.
Gaven sighs. “I don’t like it either because it puts her more at risk, but we’re running out of time and I don’t see another option. The hunters outside those doors are going to be wondering what happened. This story holds up for them and it holds up with what’s here in the room.”
I can feel Gaven’s disapproval, but I can’t tell if it’s because of the kiss or the suggestion or both.
Henry looks to his friends .
“She’s right, Hen. It’s the only way to keep the target off of you,” Carter says.
“But they’ll hate her. It will be more dangerous for her,” Henry argues.
“They already think she’s a selfish, spoiled city girl from a corrupt family. If we play into their expectations, they won’t look for another explanation,” Bryce says.
I hold up my hands. “Good—it’s settled. I need to go back to my room and wash up.”
“You’re hurt,” Henry says.
“You’re hurt worse. Clean up here. Gaven will walk me back to my room.” I thread my arm through Gaven’s and start toward the door before Henry can argue.
Bryce makes short work of the bar on the door, ready to intercept the half-drunk hunters as we slip out.
Gaven and I walk in silence down the gravel trail back toward Havenwood House. Silver moonlight turns the evergreen tree shadows ghoulish as we cut up the trail toward the back door.
He waits five blessed minutes before chastising me. “That was incredibly foolish.”
“Believe me. Silk would certainly not be my first choice for a fight with the Drained, but?—”
Gaven jerks me to a stop. “Is the careening toward oblivion going to stop at some point? The risks you were taking in Lunameade were one thing, but this isn’t a controlled environment and you are not invincible, Harlow.”
The venom in his voice is as startling as the use of my name. As much as I resent his coddling, Gaven has always been a better approximation of a father than the man who raised me. A more gracious woman would appreciate his concern, but it just makes me feel stupid.
I glance back the way we came. “Stefan and his friends caught me off guard. They must have spotted me and followed me through the sixth level. I just wanted to peek and see if the Havenwoods were really keeping a Drained, especially after what that idiot at the bar told me about the Breeders. I’m here to do a job and I got in a little over my head, but I’m not trying to make a regular thing of rumbling with these mountain men. ”
His scrutinizing gaze rakes over me. “You fell from the second story?”