Chapter Thirty-Eight #3
George Bates’s name was recognized across continents. He was as much a lord in his realm as Aldbury, one who ruled both his financial empire and his family with a merciless will and iron-hard expectations.
One who had tried to force Adam into a brutal mold that he had never been meant to fit.
This little arms race…
The high red walls around Ellie seemed to spin. Borthwick wasn’t engaging in a leap of groundless paranoia. He was accusing George Bates of trying to steal arcana… because that must be something Adam’s father had already done.
“You think I don’t know what he’s up to in Seoul?” Borthwick drawled. “He’s welcome to whatever the Joseon are hiding—but India’s treasures belong to the crown.”
Seoul, Ellie thought, feeling sick. George Bates was in Seoul.
He’s welcome to whatever the Joseon are hiding…
Borthwick’s fingers casually tapped against the butt of his whip.
The gesture was deliberate—a reminder of how willing he was to resort to violence.
“Clearly, repercussions are required. Boundaries must be maintained—but there’s no need to make it unnecessarily unpleasant.
We are all still gentlemen, after all. Your wife can carry word to your father in Korea while you remain here as my guest until he has provided a guarantee of his future good behavior. ”
Adam’s hands clenched desperately at his sides. “You can’t do that. Ellie has nothing to do with this!”
Borthwick’s brow rose. “Your wife isn’t the one I was threatening to hold on to.”
But Adam wasn’t a fool. He would have understood that.
He was afraid because Borthwick planned to send Ellie to his father.
An itching, uncomfortable tension crept up her spine.
Adam struggled to rein himself in. “My father won’t care what you do with me.”
“Nonsense,” Borthwick retorted. “George Bates is a man who values his legacy. A son isn’t something he’ll let go of lightly.”
The words echoed hollowly through Ellie’s mind.
A son isn’t something he’ll let go of lightly.
The air around her grew colder.
“Now, if whichever of you is hiding my astra would be so kind as to hand it over?” Borthwick lightly ordered.
The murderer who lurked at Ellie’s back stepped into the light, holding the power of the gods in his hands.
Jacobs’ expression was unreadable. The black lines of the tattoo on his pale chest were smeared with crimson. The Brahmastra was notched and ready, the arrow dancing with ghostly light.
Ellie’s skin hummed with an uncomfortable, electric tension. The wind that tugged at the loose tangles of her hair smelled of ozone.
Borthwick studied Jacobs with dry interest. “This is a surprise. I assumed you’d gone off to lick your wounds, but it would appear that you actually made yourself useful for a change. Bring the astra here—unless you plan to keep skulking back there like an alley thug.”
Dawson’s eyes widened with horror at the dismissive contempt in Borthwick’s tone.
Ellie’s fear tightened as though a volatile element loomed at her back, and Borthwick was intent on lighting the fuse.
Singh Rao sensed it as well. He signaled subtly to his men with a flick of his hand, and sweating fingers tensed on triggers.
Not that it would matter against the weapon that flickered silently at Ellie’s back.
Jacobs didn’t move. The bow remained taut in his grip, the astra dancing with cold flame.
Borthwick had already started to turn away. At Jacobs’ lack of response, he frowned. “Did you not hear me?”
“I heard you,” Jacobs returned in a voice that Ellie knew uncomfortably well.
Her hand rose to the bruises at her throat.
Clouds swirled dangerously through the gap overhead, thickened to a heavy charcoal. Dawson looked up at them nervously.
Singh Rao waited, tense and ready.
“Have you already forgotten the last lesson I taught you?” Borthwick snapped. “You’re the son of an East End whore. What do you think you’re here for, exactly?”
Ellie closed her eyes and wondered if they were all about to die.
Jacobs was still as water—and yet the texture of the air around him seemed to deeply, irrevocably shift.
“What am I here for?” His mouth curved into a knife-thin smile. “Nothing. Not anymore.”
He loosed the arrow.
Time slowed like water.
The roar of unquenchable flames filled Ellie’s ears. Air drew toward the bolt as though sucking into the vacuum of a black hole. Golden light burned at the corner of her eye.
The astra moved past her face with a flash of heat that pulled at the bones beneath her skin—and slammed into Borthwick’s chest.
His face twisted with purple outrage as he raised a hand to the shaft protruding from his shoulder. “You stupid bloody fool! That wasn’t even a killing—”
The words died as a wild, terrible light burst from the place where the weapon met his flesh.
Borthwick’s arms flew wide, his chest pulling toward the sky. His mouth dropped open in a terrible scream.
Ellie couldn’t hear it over the roar of the wind in her ears.
The grass bent flat with the force of the tempest, the sky overhead turning to a roiling nightmare pierced by a thousand shards of wild purple light.
Arms snared her waist and hauled her down. Ellie found herself tucked against the temple wall as Adam covered her with his body.
Borthwick glowed with impossible fire. The blaze tugged at his skin, pulling it inward until bone broke through.
Then his bones were burning.
Everything burned… until it was over.
What had once been Borthwick showered to the earth in a fall of white ash.
The grass stilled with a whisper of shifting blades. Silence settled over the enclosure.
The soldiers had dived for cover. Dawson lay flat on the ground, his hands over his head.
Neil held Constance, pressing her to the relative shelter of the temple wall.
The shocked, frozen tableau was broken by the sound of a bow hitting the ground as Jacobs unceremoniously tossed the artifact aside—and began to walk away.