by Tessa Cole
“You weren’t going to before?” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “She just used who-knows-how-much magic. Chivalry really is dead.”
“I was going to call her a cab and then ensure her safety by going after those men.”
Which was such a Cassius thing to do. He didn’t do friendly, warm gestures. He abandoned you to go out and bring you justice.
“And I’ve already told you she’s not in danger.” Sebastian grabbed the scissors and cut into the sheet.
“Someone threw your friend out of a plane or helicopter and sent men after him to make sure he was dead,” Cassius said, soaking a hand towel and ringing out the water. “They tried to kill him. Don’t you want justice?”
“Capture him.” Sebastian ripped a strip from the sheet.
“What?” The light in Cassius’s eyes flared.
“They tried to kill us so they could capture him. I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Believe me when I say, if you’re not near Titus, you’re not in danger.”
“You’ll pardon me if I just don’t take your word for it,” Cassius said, kneeling beside Titus and getting to work on cleaning him up.
Oh, for goodness sake. Again? They were going to be stuck in a standoff all night and there wasn’t any way now that Cassius would agree to let me leave by myself, no matter how much I argued with him. If I had more energy, I’d smack both of them. “Stop talking in circles. Sebastian, what’s your evidence? How do you know for certain the Quarter and Operations are safe? Cassius isn’t going to leave without more information.”
A hint of a victorious smile curled Cassius’s lips.
Yeah, no. You’re not going to think you’ve won this. “And Cassius, believe him. He’s helped the JP enough to get the benefit of the doubt.”
“Yeah, but not out of the goodness of his heart. He sent us a bill,” Cassius said.
Sebastian shrugged, and a whisper of wicked sexual playfulness gleamed in his eyes. “I had to see if the JP would pay.”
“Your evidence,” I repeated, before Cassius could argue about that as well.
“Fine.” Sebastian sighed. “Titus is from the fae realm and those men were bounty hunters of the Shadow Court. He’s their only target.” A ghost of something passed across his expression but vanished before I could figure out what it meant. “They won’t make trouble in the mortal realm unless they have to, such as finding us with Titus, and they won’t do a full assault of any place. That would draw too much attention. The only people in Union City in danger will be me and Titus as soon as you two get the hell out of my apartment.” Sebastian tore another strip from the sheet with a sharp riiiiip. “Oh, and no, I don’t want the JP’s help.”
“I’m going to hold you responsible if you’re wrong.” Which was as much of an acknowledgement as Sebastian was going to get from Cassius that he was backing down.
“You go right on ahead and do that,” Sebastian shot back.
I was sure Cassius was going to go home, sleep on it, and return at the crack of dawn demanding answers, but that was a problem for tomorrow.
Cassius harrumphed, but he and Sebastian did get to work cleaning and dressing Titus’s wounds. In strained silence, but they did it. At least they were no longer arguing.
By the time they were finished and had hauled Titus into the bed, I’d regained enough strength to stand and walk without assistance. I could almost pretend I hadn’t been weak and had just been sitting and supervising the guys’ work. Except if I’d said that out loud, I was sure neither man would have believed me. And if I thought too long about it, my cheeks would flush with embarrassment. I was supposed to be a professional. Calm, in control, a rock in the painful chaos of a patient’s injuries. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to need help, not ever again.
“I’ll come back in the morning and check on you and Titus.” I grabbed my bloody suit jacket from the bathroom floor, mindful of hiding my sore ribs from Cassius because he’d make a fuss over that if he knew about them.
“It’s better if you don’t,” Sebastian said, escorting us to his front door. “Unless you want to stay the night?” His tone turned sultry, and that damned desire heated low within me again.
Except I was pretty sure his offer was to tease me and Cassius. It wasn’t real. Not even in the sense of a one-night stand… which I wasn’t interested in. Really. That, and I needed to get back home and have my friend Priam discreetly heal my cracked ribs and what I was sure was going to be a spectacular bruise around my throat.
Not to mention, I had no clothes here and mine were covered in blood. Oh, and I really wanted a shower. If I stayed, that meant getting naked… in Sebastian’s apartment… with him close by.
A shudder swept through me, but with excitement at the prospect, not the nerves or fear I’d have expected.
I tightened my expression to hide my surprise. There was something very wrong with me.
What I needed Sebastian for was to see if he could remove my mating brand before it fully formed. Nothing more. Then I could find someone to ease my need for physical contact. Someone who wasn’t flirting just to get a rise out of me. Someone more appropriate.
“I’ll be by midmorning,” I said, heading out the door before Sebastian could argue and making my head spin with the sudden movement.
Cassius fell into step beside me and Sebastian’s door closed, the deadbolt sliding shut with a heavy click.
“I might not be able to escort you back here in the morning,” Cassius said, his voice low. “And yes, I know you don’t need someone to walk you around, but those guys are still out there.”
The spinning didn’t ease up as I reached the stairs, so I slowed my pace — hopefully not enough for Cassius to notice — and grabbed the railing to steady myself. As much as I wanted to remind him that I wasn’t helpless, I couldn’t argue with his assessment of the situation.
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to convince Sebastian to bring Titus to Operations.” I reached the landing of the third floor, my slower pace doing nothing to ease the spinning and my breath painful and shallow. “I don’t believe for a minute his friend heals so fast that he’ll be fine in the morning. He’s going to need another session or a lot of bedrest.”
“And given the situation, I doubt Sebastian will think bedrest is a good idea,” Cassius said.
“Would you?” Even I knew enough that the longer they stayed in one place, the greater the chance of being caught. Just because Sebastian said those men weren’t going to cause trouble, didn’t mean they wouldn’t start asking around about a faekin. There were so few of them in the world, and only one in Union City. Sooner or later someone would point them to Sebastian.
“I’m just afraid of what he’s going to do.” Cassius blew out a heavy breath. “I shouldn’t have let it go.”
“You should have figured out how to get him onto your side.” I let go of the railing to go around the corner on the second-floor landing, and stumbled, just a little bit, but managed to catch my balance by leaning against the wall as I walked. “You’ve worked with him before.”
“Not sure the fight against Lilith counts. He was working with Gideon’s team. I was setting my career on fire.”
“You did what you thought was right.” I struggled to draw in a deeper breath. The shallow pants weren’t enough and my dizziness was growing, and now it felt as if Titus was lying on top of me again, crushing my chest.
Cassius glanced at me and frowned. “You don’t look good.”
“Just tired.” He was one of a very few who knew firsthand what overtaxing myself did to me. Although it was starting to worry me that maybe I wasn’t recovering as quickly as usual because I’d completely drained myself too soon after the last time I’d drained myself — that being the fight against Lilith a few weeks ago.
“You know finishing Titus’s healing isn’t your responsibility,” he said. “Bane has more than enough money to afford medical attention.”
“But it wouldn’t be magical,” I ga
sped, struggling to breathe. Only angels had the ability to magically heal, and the three other angels in Union with healing worked at Mercy Memorial. They didn’t keep private practices.
“Still not your problem.”
It wasn’t, but I had every intention of returning to Sebastian’s, might as well heal Titus when I did.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out onto a small patio lit by a single light hanging above the door. The thump thump thump of the music from the dance club throbbed in my chest the moment we’d passed through the doorway, adding more evidence to the theory that Sebastian had a sound-muting spell on his residence.
The patio was just big enough to comfortably hold a wrought-iron bistro table with two chairs, its boundaries marked by four planter boxes with evergreen shrubs. Beyond, cloaked in darkness, lay a narrow alley and our way out to the street to catch a cab.
I took three steps away from the door and the air around me vanished. One minute I could breathe, sort of, the next, nothing. The weight crushing my chest swelled, making the pressure from before seem like nothing, with a pain that went beyond just my cracked ribs, and my lungs burned, desperate for oxygen.
I staggered and grabbed the edge of the bistro table, but didn’t have the strength to hold myself up. My knees smacked against the concrete ground and I crumpled onto my side. The patio spun around me, getting darker and darker, the light above the door growing smaller and smaller.
My pulse stuttered, fighting to keep going, and I desperately dug inside myself for magic, even just a spark, to save myself. But I was empty. I’d given everything to save Titus and heal Cassius and Sebastian.
And on top of that, I had no idea what was wrong with me! How could I not know? I could connect with the life force inside someone and know what was wrong with them in an instant, and that included me.
But I couldn’t get my thoughts to focus past the encroaching darkness and the burning in my lungs. All I knew was that I was suffocating, but I had no idea why.
Cassius’s face leaped into my line of vision. His expression was filled with fear and he cupped my cheeks between his strong hands, his skin hot against mine, his fire magic on the verge of releasing. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear him past the rushing in my ears. The darkness swelled, blotting out everything except a weak glimmer from the angel glow in his eyes, and my fingers and toes went numb as a chill settled inside me.
Chapter 5
Amiah
Time lurched, and I gasped in a ragged breath that sent screaming agony through my chest. One minute I was on the ground dying, the next I was in Cassius’s arms, my ear pressed against his chest hearing the rapid thud of his heart. It was like that day all over again when he’d found me. I’d been weak, barely alive not just because I’d been physically abused but because my own magic had compelled me to heal so many people without rest.
The worst part was that I’d had no one to blame but myself for my condition. If I’d resisted the urge, held my power back, I might have been strong enough to escape. But there’d been so many suffering people, many of them children. How could I have refused them? How could I have not helped them just to free myself?
Except by the time I’d realized saving my strength was my only way to escape, that the human who’d enslaved me was going to profit off my healing magic until I’d withered and died, I was too weak to resist my healing compulsion.
“Put her on the couch,” Sebastian said from somewhere ahead of me.
“How did you not know this would happen?” Cassius demanded as he set me down on something soft. “You should have warned us there was a spell on her.”
“Right, because I always know when there’s a spell around.”
I pried my eyes open and struggled to focus on my surroundings. We were back in Sebastian’s apartment, and my gaze caught and stalled on a rainbow of refracted light from the crystal chandelier shining on the marble floor near my foot. My thoughts spun around and around, crushing pain still seized my chest, and I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Don’t you?” Cassius demanded. “Those men were dangerous. You should have checked or something. That should be standard practice.”
“Not an agent,” Sebastian shot back. “There is no standard practice.”
“Not good enough.” Cassius cupped my cheeks again with his too-warm hands, smoke curling from his skin. He was starting to lose control of his fire. He raised my head, pulling my attention away from the rainbow to meet his gaze, his eyes filled with worry.
I still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, why I’d suffocated. It was like my mind had completely turned off and I couldn’t get it started again. Draining myself might have made me blackout, but it shouldn’t have suffocated me, and even if I had blacked out, it should have happened right after healing Titus.
“What happened?” I asked, my lips numb, my words embarrassingly slurred. I needed to pull myself together so he’d stop looking at me like that.
“Just a minor complication,” Sebastian said, drawing close and pressing a hand over my heart.
Cassius stiffened, his gaze dipping to Sebastian’s hand just above my breast before leaping back to mine. “He says you’re linked with Titus. That’s why you passed out.”
Everything within me froze. “I’m what?”
No.
No no no. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be happening, please don’t let it be happening.
“No. I can’t be. I won’t be. I—” I lurched forward, but Sebastian pressed me back onto the couch, my body so weak I doubted he had to use much force.
“Just take it easy,” he said.
Take it easy! As if this wasn’t my worst fear come to life?
My pulse leaped into a rapid tattoo and panic stole what little breath I’d managed to recover. I couldn’t be bonded. Not so soon. Not when there was a hope, albeit a slim hope, but a hope nonetheless, that I could escape that fate. I hadn’t even had a moment to talk with Sebastian. But without a doubt, now that the brand had formed, it’d be impossible to break. The one shot I had at freedom was gone, all because my stupid magic had locked onto a stranger and compelled me to save him.
“It’ll be okay,” Sebastian said, and an icy tingle of his magic seeped into my skin, doing little to ease my panic. It tugged at something inside me then melted into nothing. “Damn. I was right. Well, no matter. I’ll break it and then you can be on your merry way.”
“You’re just going to break it? Just like that?” A harsh laugh escaped my lips. If it was that easy to break a mating brand, surely angels would have known about it.
My thoughts stuttered over that. Unless maybe no one knew because no one wanted to know? Maybe he was right and I could be free before the brand compelled me to fall in love with Titus. I didn’t even know Titus. How was that fair? I didn’t want to lose my life to a stranger. I didn’t—
Sebastian frowned. “Okay, maybe not just like that.”
“Of course not.” My heart sank and my eyes burned with tears that I was not going to cry. I needed to keep it together and regain control. If I looked strong and acted strong, eventually I’d be strong. I wouldn’t let this define me. Not like it had for my whole life. I’d find a way out. I would. Please.
“Hey,” Cassius said, shifting to sit beside me on the couch — with an appropriately modest amount of space between us — and drawing my attention back to him. “You’re not trapped.”
“Don’t,” I said, my throat tight. If he tried to convince me this was a good thing, I’d start crying. And I was not going to cry! “Don’t tell me it’s magical and beautiful and sacred.”
Sebastian huffed. “A leash spell? Yeah. It’s anything but. It’s not even close to a soul bond and certainly not that kind of permanent. I can break it. I just need a resonance charm.”
His words tripped in my mind. “So you’re saying…?”
I pressed my hand against my hip where my aching mating brand was. It didn’t hurt more than befor
e and it wasn’t warm like the stories said a newly formed brand felt like. The need to pull up my camisole and shove down the waistband of my pants to check made my pulse race even faster. But I couldn’t do it in front of Sebastian or Cassius. Cassius would probably be awed and amazed that I was destined to have a soul mate, and Sebastian would make some remark about taking my clothes off.
Sebastian chuckled. “You thought you were branded?”
“What other option was there?” I glared at him, fighting tears that were a mix of panic and relief. I still had time. I could still be free.
“I suppose leash spells are rare here.” He sat on the edge of his coffee table. He still wore his bloody clothes and blood still streaked the tips of his white and silver hair, and while I was sure he wasn’t bleeding as badly as before I’d healed him, his complexion was still a little gray. “The good news is it won’t fuck with your emotions like a soul bond and it’s not permanent.”
“And the bad news?” Cassius asked, his voice dark and dangerous.
“You can’t go far. A leash spell links a prisoner to their master, so if the prisoner goes beyond the designated distance, they’ll suffocate. Well, technically it removes the air around the prisoner and that suffocates them. And by the looks of it, you can’t go more than a hundred feet from Titus.”
My breath hitched, and the panic that had eased when I’d learned I wasn’t mated to Titus surged, squeezing my chest and turning my breath into shallow quick gasps again. “So I’m Titus’s prisoner?”
“No. Titus started suffocating as well. That’s why I ran down to get you,” Sebastian said. “I thought he was the prisoner half of the spell. But I think what happened is that he somehow managed to break a leash spell originally on him, but didn’t completely dispel it. When you healed him, the spell must have reignited. But it’s as if you’re both the prisoner.”
I couldn’t be anyone’s prisoner. Not again. Even if it hadn’t been intended, I couldn’t be trapped like this.