Chapter 8 — Teeth #2
Gideon spat. The motion was reflexive, pain-driven, his head jerking forward as he cradled his hand.
His mouth caught the edge of my right glove as I withdrew.
Tooth on leather. A sharp drag and then heat.
I felt the seam give over my knuckle and the hot slide underneath.
When I flexed, blood welled through the split in a dark line and soaked into the stitching.
Split knuckle. Right hand. Location. Severity. Function retained.
“Thirty feet,” I said to Gideon, still quiet. “Walk back to Marcus on your own legs. Get that finger splinted tonight or it heals crooked and you lose the pull.”
He stared at me, cradling his hand, his breath coming short through his nose.
For a second I thought he would lunge with the left.
I set my feet and shifted my shoulder wider to cover her.
Then the second passed and he chose survival.
He stepped back. One step. Two. His boots loud on the runner, then quieter. The corridor air moved again.
Marcus watched him come. Thirty feet of amber runner between us, and I finally turned my head enough to meet his eyes.
He had his boar signet twisted halfway around his finger and his white square a perfect line.
He looked at Gideon's hand, at my bleeding glove, at Wren's left hand fisted in my coat behind my shoulder.
He smiled, but the expression never reached past his mouth.
That was new information and I filed it.
The smiling butcher had just learned the cost of touching what I had marked, and he was recalculating in real time.
“This is unlike you, Kross,” he called down the hall, pleasant as a donor toast. “Over a wrist.”
“Over mine,” Wren said behind me before I could answer. Her voice was clear and cold, socialite polish stripped down to the flat verdict underneath. “He grabbed my wrist. Yours did first.”
Silence. The quartet sawed on, oblivious.
Ice cracked in the bar bucket as it melted.
Julian's gaze stayed on us, heavy and unreadable, his hands clasped.
Nolan wrote something down and underlined it.
Ophelia lifted Mercy half an inch off the floor and set it down again, deliberate, letting the wood talk.
I felt Wren straighten behind my shoulder, felt her move her injured arm tighter against her own body to guard it, felt her breath against my coat.
Four counts in. A hitch. Four out. She was running her own telemetry and doing it well.
I announced the next move before I made it. Protocol holds even when the blood is up, especially then. “Wren. I am going to put my left hand at your elbow. In two seconds. We are walking to the bar cart for ice.”
Two seconds. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand.
My gloved left hand settled at her elbow, high above the bruise, over the burgundy silk.
Her skin was hot through the fabric. She was shaking, fine tremors running up from the forearm, shock arriving late the way it always does after the body decides it survived.
I guided her two steps to the cart where the bar back had abandoned his post for the ballroom rush.
The ice bucket sweated. I worked one-handed, keeping my bleeding right hand clear, and wrapped three cubes in a clean napkin with my left and held it out without touching her injury.
“Right wrist hovering,” I said. “You hold the cold. I do not touch the bruise.”
She took the bundle left-handed, awkward across her body, and pressed it to the red with a hiss through her teeth.
The cold bit. Her eyes watered and she blinked it back, furious at the weakness.
I counted while she breathed. In four. Hold two.
Out four. Three cycles. Her pulse jumped visible at her throat under the locket chain, rabbit-fast at first, then slowing as the ice numbed the tissue.
Seventy and dropping. I tracked it against my own, finally coming down, the two rhythms bracketing the corridor noise.
Sconce hum. Fur settling. Gideon's boots retreating.
A man grabbed her bruise on purpose. I broke his finger for it.
The room saw. That was the data. Everything else could wait for the car.
My right glove was ruined. Blood darkened the seam and stiffened the leather over the knuckle.
I peeled both gloves off finger by finger and checked the joint.
Skin parted clean, still bleeding sluggishly.
Function retained. I pressed the napkin edge to it, then worked my spare pair on from my right coat pocket, left first, then right, the fresh leather already spotting over the wound. Gloves back on. Covered. Controlled.
Wren watched the whole sequence with her ice pressed to her wrist. Her gaze tracked my hands the way mine tracked her pulse, inventoried each motion, filed it. The shaking eased.
“Does it need stitches,” she asked quietly.
“No.” I flexed to prove it and regretted the flare. “Tooth graze. It bleeds to make a point.”
“Noted.” A ghost of dark humor at the corner of her mouth, there and gone. Her clutch hung from her left wrist now, the ice bundle awkward in the same hand. She adjusted, wincing, and I announced again before she could flinch.
“Coat over your shoulders in two seconds. Then the curb.”
Two seconds. My wool coat came off my shoulders and settled around hers, heavy and warm. She pulled it closed left-handed over the gown, and something in her posture changed under the weight. Less displayed. More guarded. Claimed and guarded, and the whole corridor had witnessed the signing.
Felix's headlights swept the glass doors at the far end as the Escalade rolled under the awning. Right on time, summoned by a text I had thumbed one-handed while she held the ice. The lighter sat a single hard shape in my left pocket. Load her. Seat her. Belt her. Drive.
We walked, my left hand at her good elbow, announcing each turn, each door, each step down.
The coat-check girl stared. Nolan stared.
Marcus stared with that recalculated smile.
Gideon sat hunched on the bench with his ruined hand cradled, already a man with a splint in his future.
Ophelia caught my eye as we passed the service door and tipped her chin half an inch.
A question. A promise. Mercy rested against her boot. I answered with the same half inch.
The October air hit us at the doors, fifty degrees and clean after the fur and whiskey.
Wren pulled my coat tighter and stepped into the Escalade on Felix's arm, the melting ice napkin still clutched in her left hand.
I handed her in without touching a wrist and watched her settle the clutch in her lap.
Her pulse still beat at her throat. Slower now. Held.
I slid in after her and pulled the door shut on the hotel light, on Marcus, on the whole watching wall. The lock engaged. Felix met my eyes in the mirror, rosary swaying, and pulled from the curb without being told.
Beside me Wren leaned her head back against the seat and exhaled, ice pressed to red, my coat over her shoulders, her left hand finding my sleeve in the dark without asking and holding on.
The leash was gone. What was left had fangs.