Chapter 14
THE KNIFE CAME FOR HER THROAT.
Magnus reacted before the blade finished its arc.
His arm shot up in a brutal interception even as his other hand locked around Elia’s waist and ripped her behind him.
The movement was violent and fast. One moment she stood in his arms, the next her back struck the balcony wall as Magnus’s body slammed between her and the attack.
Steel struck flesh.
The blade carved across Magnus’s forearm instead of her neck. Cloth split. Blood burst across the white sleeve of his tux.
Only then did the attacker speak.
“Move, Severin.”
Reality crashed through her in a swift, dizzying assault. The man had been directly behind her. If Magnus had been half a second slower, the knife would have opened the side of her throat.
“Not a chance, asshole.” Magnus drove forward.
The two men collided hard enough to rattle the stone railing. The assassin recovered quickly and jerked the knife up again, aiming a vicious thrust toward Magnus’s ribs.
Magnus caught his wrist mid-strike.
The blade stopped inches from his chest.
For a suspended second they strained against one another, the assassin driving forward with everything he had while Magnus held him there as if the effort barely registered. Blood ran down Magnus’s arm and dripped from his fingers. He didn’t even glance at the wound.
Then Magnus twisted.
Bone cracked.
The assassin made a harsh choking sound as his wrist snapped backward.
The knife dropped.
Before the man could recover, Magnus slammed him face-first into the railing. Stone rang under the impact. The assassin rebounded, dazed, and Magnus seized the front of his jacket with one hand and the ruined wrist with the other, owning the man completely.
Through the open balcony doors Elia heard the first startled gasps from inside the ballroom. Crystal chimed somewhere as a guest jerked backward too quickly. Music still played for half a heartbeat more, absurdly elegant beneath the raw brutality exploding just outside.
Magnus never once looked away from the man in his grip. The assassin tried to wrench free. Magnus tightened his hold.
The man drove an elbow backward. Magnus shifted, absorbed it, and forced him down harder against stone.
Elia saw the muscles in Magnus’s shoulders flex beneath torn fabric and skin, saw the contained savagery in the movement, the total absence of panic.
He wasn’t simply fighting. He was ending the threat.
And he was terrifying.
She had known he was dangerous. Everyone knew that.
Magnus Severin moved through rooms with power clinging to him like a second skin.
Men stepped carefully around him. Women watched him with caution and hunger and the kind of curiosity that came from seeing something beautiful and realizing too late it had teeth.
But this was something else. This was what happened when danger reached for what was his.
The assassin bucked again.
Magnus leaned close.
Close enough that the man had no choice but to look directly into his eyes. Close enough that Elia knew, with a certainty that made her stomach drop, that the assassin understood in that instant he had not merely failed.
He had made a fatal miscalculation.
Magnus’s voice was calm. Almost conversational. “You should’ve brought a gun.” Then he hauled the man upright, pivoted with brutal efficiency, and threw him over the balcony.
Elia saw the body disappear beyond the rail. She didn’t see the fall. For one endless heartbeat there was nothing. Then a dull, sickening impact rose from the courtyard below.
The music inside the ballroom cut off at last and someone screamed. Another voice shouted for security. Chairs scraped. Glass shattered. The spell of the gala broke all at once, glamour collapsing into fear in a wave of noise that washed through the open doors.
Magnus turned immediately.
Blood sheeted down his arm now. It streaked his hand, ran over his knuckles, fell in a bright stream to the balcony floor.
His face had hardened into something cold and pitiless, all taut rage and ruthless purpose.
He crossed to her in two strides and gripped her jaw lightly, forcing her eyes to his.
“Are you hurt?”
The question hit with almost as much force as the attack itself. She shook her head too fast. “No.”
His gaze moved over her anyway. Throat. Shoulders. Hands. Dress. The fast, merciless inventory of a man who would not tolerate missing a wound because panic obscured it. Only when he was satisfied did he release her.
“You’re bleeding,” she gasped.
“Later.”
He caught her wrist and pulled her toward the ballroom.
Inside, chaos had already begun to spread in widening circles.
Guests clustered away from the balcony doors, pale and disordered, trying to understand what they had just heard and what they thought they might have seen.
Security men were converging from opposite sides of the room, radios crackling, jackets shifting as hands moved toward concealed weapons.
The chandeliers still blazed. The flowers still gleamed in silver bowls.
The entire room looked grotesquely unchanged except for the human panic running through it.
Magnus ignored every bit of it.
He moved through the center of the ballroom with blood on his arm and fury in every line of his body, and the crowd opened before him as if compulsion had finally overpowered confusion. Men stepped aside. Women flinched back. No one blocked his path. No one asked a question.
Elia stumbled once on the hem of her gown. He steadied her without slowing.
“Magnus.” Her voice came thin and shaken. “The cut.”
He looked down only long enough to pin her with that pale, dangerous stare. “Stay with me.”
There was no comfort in the words. It was a command, a demand, a refusal to let the shock take her under.
Stay with me.
Not fall apart. Not drift. Not vanish inside what had almost happened. She clung to the order because there was nothing else to hold.
They reached the ballroom exit just as two of Leif’s security men rushed up from the hall. One look at Magnus’s arm, the open balcony doors behind them, and Elia’s white face was enough.
“Lock it down,” Magnus said. “No one leaves. No one touches the body below until Leif sees it.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Another guard spoke rapidly into his radio, and the entire machine of Severin response seemed to lurch into motion around them.
Magnus kept moving.
He pushed through the front doors and into the cool night.
The air hit Elia’s face like a slap, but the sharpness did nothing to clear the haze from her mind.
Lights blazed across the circular drive.
Staff froze at the entrance when they saw the blood.
Somewhere far behind them another scream rose from the ballroom and cut off abruptly.
“Car,” Magnus barked.
One of the guards repeated it into his radio at once.
Magnus was already pulling out his phone. He dialed before the sedan had even reached the steps. “Leif.” The name came out flat and lethal. A beat of listening. “Donati sent someone.” Another beat. “Yes,” Magnus said. “Balcony. He’s dead.”
His mouth flattened further at whatever Leif said in response.
“No, I’m not staying. The building’s compromised.
” He looked at Elia while he spoke, at her throat, at the place where the blade had been meant to go, and something in his face darkened even more.
“Lock it down. Question everyone. And find out how the bastard got that close.”
He ended the call before Leif had fully finished speaking. Another number followed instantly. “Alaric.”
The sedan slid to a stop in front of them.
“Donati tried to kill her,” Magnus said.
“Leif already knows. I’m taking her home.
” He listened, irritation flashing briefly through his expression.
“No. I don’t care what they claim this was.
It was a hit.” Another pause. “Good. Then handle it.” He put the phone away.
Elia stared at him. Tried to kill her. Hearing him say it aloud drove the truth all the way through her.
This had not been a random attack. Not a madman slipping past security for glory.
Someone had sent a professional to a crowded gala to put a knife in her throat while she stood beside Magnus Severin.
He opened the rear door and guided her in. “Home,” he told the driver as he climbed in after her.
The sedan pulled away smoothly.
Only then did the shaking begin.
Elia hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding herself together until the car merged into traffic and the immediate necessity of movement gave her body permission to react.
Tremors slid through her arms and legs, fine and relentless.
She clasped her hands together in her lap to stop them and failed.
Magnus noticed immediately. “Look at me.”
She did.
The cut looked worse in the confined light of the car than it had on the balcony. Blood still tracked down his arm, dark and bright at once, soaking the torn sleeve and slipping over the edge of his hand in steady drops. The sight tightened something deep inside.
“You’re still bleeding,” she said.
“It’ll hold.”
“No, it won’t.”
She leaned forward before he could stop her, reached into the torn inside of his jacket, found a handkerchief, and pressed it firmly to the wound. Magnus inhaled once, sharply, but didn’t pull away.
The cloth turned red almost at once.
Her throat burned. He’d put his body between hers and the knife without hesitation. If he hadn’t been so incredibly swift, if he had turned the wrong way, if he had misread the timing by even half a breath...
“He was aiming for my throat.”
“Yes.” No false reassurance. No lie to soften it.
“Why?”
Magnus leaned back against the seat, but there was nothing relaxed in it. He looked as though every muscle remained ready for another fight. His uninjured hand braced against his thigh. His jaw hadn’t unclenched since the attack.