Chapter 10 #3
“Jesamin?” he asked, hope kindling in his eyes.
“By the Lady, Rasmus!” Fel Arron pulled him upright, suddenly checking him with the overprotectiveness of a mother hen—wiping dust from his face, examining a clotted wound on his cheek, frowning at his dirty hair. “What happened to you?”
I stood up slowly, watching with a frozen feeling in my chest as the young man took one of her hands in his trembling grasp.
Kajarin’s younger son, Rasmus lai Orros. He was handsome for a human, in a pretty way, with a head of inky curls and big dark soulful eyes, but his fine clothes were so filthy it was nearly impossible to see he was a nobleman at first glance.
And I hadn’t realized that fel Arron knew him personally. Knew him well enough to touch his cheek tenderly as she checked him for wounds.
Something hot and sharp ripped through my chest, the ice melting under the force of its sickening fury.
“You’re real,” he whispered, staring at her like she was a goddess incarnate. “Gods, you’re here and you’re real. I’m not…I’m not mad.”
“No, you’re not. We’re real, and we’re looking for the next bastion now. We’ll clean you up and you can tell me what happened.” She managed a watery smile. “Rasmus…what were you thinking, going in there?”
I couldn’t stand to watch her clutch his hands any longer, that worried line between her eyes, as though her entire heart hinged on this little bastard’s well-being.
I stalked over, grabbed Rasmus by the back of his neck, and lifted him off the floor. I forced him to face me, no more than a spanked kitten now, dangling limp in my grasp and his face suitably pale with terror at the sight of me.
“What are you doing?” fel Arron demanded, rising up and glaring at me. “He’s injured!”
I couldn’t stop my lip from curling. “He might be injured, but two hundred are gone because of him, fel Arron!” I shook him, enjoying the sight of his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. “And the Mother only knows how many others. What part did you play, bastard? What was your role in this?”
He took a gasping breath, wheezing his words out. “I’m the alchemist, just the alch—” Rasmus cut off with a choking gurgle as my fingers tightened.
I stared at fel Arron triumphantly. “The alchemist. Who do you think made the concoction that spread over Lonmire?”
She stared at me defiantly, but the blood had drained from her face. Her voice was deadly quiet when she spoke. “Do you think I haven’t considered that, Wroth? Put him down. Come aside and speak with me.”
She glanced over her shoulder, and started when she saw that the men with Rasmus were now standing in a tidy, obedient line—because Marrion held a hand towards them.
She had cut her fingertips open, and a thread of blood extended from each one, wavering in the air between them like a spiderweb caught on a breeze.
The threads burrowed beneath the men's skins, into throats and cheeks and eyes.
She held them all like a puppeteer, the prisoners unable to defy her will.
“Gods,” fel Arron whispered, but she gripped my arm. “Please, put him down, Wroth.”
I dropped Rasmus like the sack of shit he was, and he hit the floor with an undignified squawk. “You move a single fucking inch, boy, and I’ll let you choose: either I suck you dry, or I feed you to the first Fae-bred monstrosity I find down here.”
He nodded frantically, tears cutting tracks through the dust on his face, and fel Arron pulled me aside, putting me between her and the boy like a wall.
“Don’t you dare think what you’re thinking,” she whispered, eyes blazing. “If you scare him, he’ll never talk. Let me fuss a bit, and I’ll coax everything out of him.”
“He had a major hand in this.” I leaned towards her, tilting my head towards her throat like I was going to bite, but my voice was for her ears alone. Goosebumps rose on her exposed flesh. “Why should he be treated like a precious cosset?”
Fel Arron swallowed but raised her chin defiantly, and my eyes went to the movement of her throat, the fine flexing of muscles and the beat of her pulse. Despite the sweat and terror, gods, she smelled delicious.
“He was always…favored.” Her words were hardly audible now. “Beloved by the girls in the Collegium. Kid gloves will get more out of him than an iron fist, if he thinks he can charm his way out.”
She met my eyes squarely, refusing to back down even with the threat of my fangs at her throat.
Was she begging for him because she believed that?
Or because she was one of the girls enamored with Rasmus, favoring him?
My mouth watered at her scent flooding my nose, my thoughts becoming murky. I found myself picturing fel Arron and Rasmus, his soft, weakling arms wrapped around her, his lips on her neck…
I didn’t realize I was growling until fel Arron gripped my arm, her nails digging in.
“Will you trust me on this?” she hissed fiercely. “You brought me for a reason, Wroth. I know him—let me do what I can.”
Oh, she must know him, to be so confident of this. Would she charm the answers from him with her own flesh, her lips? Were there secret memories shared between the two of them?
She had rushed to him first. Offered her protectiveness, her tenderness, her caring, to him.
With an effort I uncurled my lip, trying to swallow that stabbing sensation under my breastbone, but it wouldn’t dislodge.
“I don’t know you well enough to trust you,” I said, and there was a hot, shameful rush in my chest at the open expression of bewildered hurt on her face. “But you may have him for one night in the bastion. And if he doesn’t answer, he’s mine.”
I snarled the last words in her face, and turned to herd our prisoners away.