22. A Bloodred Hem
A BLOODRED HEM
Bran reached for shadows as his feet hit the ground. “Stay, Guin.” Guns were involved. Guin could fight hand to hand, but she couldn’t guard herself against a bullet. He reached for a little light to see through the dark, looking for the outlines of a body.
There they were—two figures huddling at the end of the alley they were stopped outside of. Bran stood between them and the coach, but he heard whispers in the cold night air.
“There’s two on the other side,” Hesperus whispered from his perch on the driver’s bench.
“Four in all.”
“Good odds.”
“Not with firearms.” Bran hated guns.
“For you maybe.” Hesperus launched himself to the ground, shaking the coach. He was bigger than usual, and he cracked his neck side to side before gathering shadows. His chuckle was low. “I’m from an old alchemist family. A bullet’s nothing but a bit of metal.” His hands glowed.
The other man could probably catch bullets and spit them right out. Not a talent Bran possessed.
“Give up,” Bran called out, “or fight.”
A bang. Then a bullet whizzed past his ear and lodged in the coach.
From inside, Guin yelped.
“Fuck,” Bran hissed. “Guin!”
“I’m not hit!” Guin called.
He shook off his fear. She was unharmed. She would remain so. Bran strode into the alley. Let Hesperus care for the other two. Bran had these.
The alley swallowed light, and Bran stepped into the darkness. Not ideal for shadow manipulation. He brought up a glamour in his palm—a floating fairy orb—and saw the two men at the end of the alley. One trained a pistol on Bran, and the other was stuffing a ramrod into the end of his own pistol.
Two shots rang out on the other side of the coach.
Hesperus chuckled again.
Guin swore, and Bran heard the coach door swing open.
“Guin,” he warned.
She darted into the street behind him, running off who knew where. He almost couldn’t stop himself from running off after her, but he had to, and with another frustrated growl, he continued marching toward the gunmen.
“Stop,” one yelled. “Just give us the duchess.”
The other was done loading his gun, and he brandished it toward Bran. “We’ll let you go!”
“Tell me,” Bran said calmly, a deception perpetrated through gritted teeth. “Why do you want her?”
A duo of shots behind Bran, then the sounds of a scuffle, boots slapping against the ground, a skull hitting a wall.
“Just need to get rid of her,” one attacker said.
“You’ll be better off without her,” the other assured him.
“And who is paying you?” Bran asked. “Maryville?”
“Mary who?” The men looked at each other.
One was trembling now, and he shook the gun at Bran. “Stay there. We don’t want to hurt you. I’m not hangin’ for no duke.”
“But you’ll hang for hurting a duchess?” He was close now. He didn’t want a panicked fight. He wanted to disarm them.
“Nah. She’s a scoundrel, from what we hear. Only pretending to be a princess.”
“As she’s my wife, I can assure you she’s not pretending.” A few steps closer.
Above him, a window opened. Fuck. An innocent could get hurt. And where the hell was Guin? Hopefully running toward Mayfair.
He needed to end this quickly.
The fairy orb threw a shadow from the person in the window onto the wall right next to one of the attackers.
Bran launched himself into shadow, his glamour orb snapping out of existence.
To them he’d disappeared into darkness. But he was right where he needed to be.
He snatched the gun out of one of the fellow’s hands. It went off.
And the person from the window dropped to the ground with an oof. He couldn’t see them land. No idea what the bullet had hit. Not him. But there was a new factor in the ally—friend or foe? And did they think to get themselves killed?
Hands slapped at Bran’s body, looking for his gun. The attacker swung wildly in the dark. Bran swerved, but not quite in enough time. A punch caught him on the ear. The world buzzed, whined.
And a fairy orb flickered into life, glamoured, not real, and not Bran’s.
In the dim glow, Gwen stood from a crouch, blade in one hand, glamoured orb in the other. She’d been the figure in the window, the one who’d jumped.
He should have fucking known.
One of the men screamed. “It’s a ghost!” He staggered away from him.
But she lunged for the man’s gun.
He must have realized she wasn’t a ghost because he wasn’t trembling anymore.
Bran fought his own fight, holding the gun he’d taken from the other attacker above his head.
The man shoved him against the wall. He couldn’t throw the gun in his hand away.
Who knew where an accidental firing would send a bullet.
So he brought his knee up into the man’s balls, dropping him like a dead man.
Bran trained the gun in his hands on the other attacker. “Drop it.”
“Do as he says.” Guin held her cane sword at the ready. “Hand over the pistol.”
“Yer her,” the attacker sneered.
“And your eyes are red,” Guin said. “But just because you’re immune to pain doesn’t mean it can’t kill you.” Guin sliced her dagger at him, a movement so quick Bran saw nothing but the flash of silver in the orb’s golden light.
And he saw the twitch of the man’s hand, too.
Bran dove.
Just before the gun went off.
The bullet tore into his shoulder and out, his only thought before hitting the ground was a wild fear the same bullet that hit him might have hit Guin too.
“Fuck!” The attacker stepped away from Bran. “I hit the duke! Run!” He took off, and the man moaning on the ground stumbled to his feet and limped after him.
They met Hesperus at the alley’s end.
“Good evening, gents,” Hesperus said. “You can climb up into that coach under your own power or I’ll help you.”
The men obliged him, and Hesperus slammed the door shut. His hand glowed over the mechanism that kept the door closed, melting it, locking them in. “Got ’em all, duke.”
“Bran!” Guin hit the ground beside him as he pushed upright, the world still ringing and muffled in his ears, and a pain burning in his shoulder like hellfire.
He was dizzy, but he tried to push to his feet. “I’m fine. Just a scratch.”
“It went right though!” She pulled him back down into her lap.
Not a bad place to be, even with her face pale and frantic, even as she tore at her skirts.
“You’re bleeding from both sides! Be still.
We have to stop it.” Her words were frantic, too, cracking and breaking like ice on a lake during the first spring thaw.
“I’m fine.”
“Hesperus! He’s losing so much blood. We need to get him home!”
Something hit his cheek. A raindrop. Then another. No, her tears, coming steady now, though she tried to wipe them away.
“I think the bullet was doused in our poison. The one that keeps a wound open unless you have the antidote. The hole is so small, but there’s too much blood.”
He was dizzy.
She bunched her ripped skirts up and pressed them hard into his wound. He hissed, and she cried, and he lifted a heavy arm to comfort her.
Hesperus hit his knees on Bran’s other side. “Good God.”
“I think it’s a poison. I don’t have an antidote with me. I haven’t needed it—” The attacks had stopped. Her senses had dulled, her precautions dwindling as she’d grown confident in her safety with her mighty Shadow at her back. “We have to get him to Mayfair alive.”
“Give him to me.” Hesperus lifted Bran in his arms and carried him.
“Humiliating,” Bran mumbled, his lips cold.
Guin held his hand, running beside them, and she stayed with him when Hesperus flung him like a sack of flour over a horse’s back. Pain tore through Bran’s shoulder, down his torso and arm. He hated guns.
“No saddle.” Hesperus unhitched the horse. “You’ll have to ride bareback. Can you do it, or should—”
“I can do it.”
A curse crossed Bran’s lips, but it was too soft for anyone but him to hear. Too dangerous. She could fall.
“You interrogate them,” Guin said. “See if you can find out anything about the bullet.”
“Get home safely, duchess.”
He felt the horse shift as she vaulted up behind him, her legs squeezing against his body. They’d squeezed against his body earlier. So perfect.
The horse took off, hooves beating against the road, each step an agony, and even worse, the last thing he saw before he no longer possessed the strength to open his eyes—the hem of his wife’s skirts, soaked in his own blood.