9. Gold Eyes and Green #2
Guin rolled her shoulders back. “Oh good. I’d begun to get bored.” She pressed the button on the handle of her cane, releasing her sword as she reached into her pocket, slipping through the hole there to grasp the dagger holstered around her thigh.
Beside her, Braxton—hat still pulled down low, collar still popped high, the edges of his greatcoat flapping open in a light evening wind—already wielded two daggers. One glowed, slowly lengthening into a sword. His hand glowed, too.
She’d seen it before. So many times. A different man wielding the magic, though.
“Stay behind me,” he barked.
“Keep up with me,” she sang, stepping forward.
The men flew at them.
And Braxton strode forward to meet them. Metal clashed against metal, and Guin remained close to the duke, the way Bran had taught her to stay close to him during battle without getting in the way. If they were back-to-back no one could attack them from behind.
The men were foolish enough to do exactly what all men did. Even though they were after her, they attacked him.
Braxton held two of them off with ease, but the third was looking for other ways to dispossess Braxton of his weapons. He wasn’t paying attention to Guin. The fool.
He thought she’d cower.
She whipped her hand out of her pocket and charged, catching the man in the gut with her blade.
He yelped and clutched at his belly as she withdrew her knife. It came away red. His eyes—red too. And after the first shock of injury, he recovered quickly, recognized her as a threat, and refocused. He’d clearly taken a potion of some sort, something to keep the pain at bay.
“That wound I gave you will not heal,” she said, “without the antidote.”
Behind her, Braxton grappled with the other men, his movements fluid, smooth as shadows. He seemed to be a shadow, the bulk of his body shifting, almost disappearing.
“Focus on your man, Guin!” he shouted, his voice different, deeper…
She focused.
Her man took a swipe at her with something sharp, ripping a gash several inches long in her sleeve.
“Intolerable,” she muttered. “This was new.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth and flicked her sword up toward her attacker’s nose.
A heavy thud behind her.
“One down,” Braxton called out. “Keep at it.”
“Me next, please.” She snuck the tip of her sword tip beneath the man’s chin. He held a hook of some sort in his right hand, and the curved blade of it was dull in the dying day.
He wrapped his other hand—naked and soft—around her sword and forced it away from his neck. He didn’t even flinch as the blade bit into his skin, likely into his muscle. His bone?
She shivered and wrenched the sword from his grip. Tried to. She’d never met an opponent like this, so unworried about his own pain, so immune to it.
“They’ve taken something,” she called out.
“I’ve discerned that.” His voice gruff and thick with an almost musical accent.
She danced backward, toward him, and tripped on something, righted herself. Braxton’s hat was on the ground, ruined in a puddle.
Her attacker yanked the sword from her grip with unnatural strength.
“Too bad about the hat,” she said. “You looked dapper in it.”
“I’ll get a new one.” He grunted and hit the ground as his remaining attacker abandoned weapons for fists. “Pick it up.”
“What?”
Her attacker narrowed the gap between them, red eyes gleaming.
“The hat!” Braxton slammed a fist into his opponent’s face. “Pick it up!”
When her attacker dove for her, she dove for the ground, her chin scrapping against rock as she curled around the hat.
The man stumbled when his arms wrapped around nothing, she grinned, recognizing the feel of the hat in her hands. Rolling to her feet, she met the man, swinging toward her once more, with a clap of her hands.
A clap of the hat between her hands, flattening it. The steel brim was heavy, flat, and when she tossed it, it cut through the air with ease.
And when it hit her attacker right between the eyes, he fell to the ground like a dead man.
He very well could be.
“Another down!” she called, retrieving the hat and jumping away from the collapsed man before he could prove himself not unconscious at all. “Hurry up with yours.”
Braxton grunted, threw a punch so hard and with such precise aim, his opponent flew backward and into the overhanging shadow of a building. Braxton jumped to his feet and prowled after him, golden hair the only source of light in the almost faded day.
She lost sight of him and ventured closer until she could see two shadows grappling in the dim light. They were locked in battle, and blood poured from a wound in the attacker’s side.
Braxton was nothing more than a dark blur, and the man he had trapped against the side of the building was writhing, clawing at his eyes where shadows clung, blinding him.
With a guttural scream, he broke loose and ran from the shadows, his red gaze firmly on Guin.
She flattened the hat again, ready.
But Braxton reached the attacker first, pulling a blade from his boot, hooking an arm around his neck, and slipping the knife between two ribs.
The attacker dropped between them, and Guin was staring into Braxton’s golden eyes when the sun completed its journey below the horizon, and the city shadows slid together.
Darkness. For a breath.
Before the fairy lights lining the street flickered on, flooding everything with their bobbing white light.
Braxton stood in their glow, chest heaving, sweat slicking his brow, blood on his hands.
But his eyes weren’t gold. They were green.
And the thick black tangle of his hair was as familiar to her as each scar that scorched his jaw, his eyebrow, his hands.
Bran.
She couldn’t feel her legs, but somehow she still stood, a buzzing growing louder in her ears, swallowing her whole.
“S-stop it,” she heard herself say. “Why would you be so cruel?”
Confusion flickered in his eyes. Green eyes. Then he stretched out his arms, turned them over. And over. “Fucking Jupiter.”
What Bran always said.
And so many little details clicked into place—the way he fought, how he’d not asked her if she’d slept with Bran, how he took charge of Ned as if he’d done it before, how he’d known exactly what to get to stock her conservatory, how Artemis had flown to him without question, how he knew every detail of her life since she’d left him.
She flew at him, making claws for green eyes she’d longed to see since losing them. “Stop it! Take it off! Take off the glamour!” She knew it wasn’t one, but a screeching inside her couldn’t let it go. Because to rip away the lie left only betrayal.
He caught her, pinning her arms to her sides, hissing and thrashing like a cat held over water.
Everywhere she touched him—hard like the body that had kissed her ten days ago. And solid like a form without a glamour. Her clothes did not disappear past a glimmering surface. They met dirty linen and silk. Her face thrashed against a bare throat. Her hands pushed against a black waistcoat.
No glamour.
Just him.
Bran.
Also Braxton. Impossible, all of it impossible, but solid like the truth.
He released her, and she stumbled backward, unable to look away from his face. Her lips were numb now.
He’d kissed her.
What had he said that night? Oh yes…
“The man did not want even a kiss from me.”
“I think he did.”
“You don’t know.”
“Trust me. I know.”
He stepped toward her, and she flung an arm out.
“You’re Bran.”
He nodded.
“And Braxton.”
He nodded.
“I don’t understand.”
“Guin—”
“No. You stay there. I thought you were dead! And you were alive this whole time?”
“Guin—”
“No!” She was shaking everywhere now, and she hugged herself, trying to stop it. “It’s worse. You—Braxton… you’ve been Bran this whole time?”
“Let me explain.” His voice had that rough purr now, the Scottish brogue that had always run a delicious shiver right up her spine. He took another step closer.
“Don’t you dare get near me!”
“You’re pale. You’re shivering. You’ve been cut. Let me help you, and when you’re recovered, I’ll explain—”
She punched him, felt the bones of his face rattle the bones in her hand.
“Fucking Jupiter,” he hissed, folding in half.
She laughed, a maniacal sort of thing as she staggered away from him.
He limped after her, caught her wrist, blood pouring down his nose. His crooked nose. She’d been with him when he’d broken it.
Bran.
Her husband.
Her guard.
The same man.
She tried to rip from his grip, but he held tight.
“No!” she said, her muscles melting. That seemed the only word she could muster as the ground rushed up to meet her. Because the one thing she’d prayed for since the fire had happened—Bran was back—and it was nothing but a nightmare.