His fingers traveled down my arm, and he caught my other hand, holding both. I turned them, nesting the backs of my hands in his palms. We were silent several moments, my injured shoulder and cheek throbbing. The weight of his gaze was so heavy I couldn’t raise my eyes.
The bathroom shrank around us. That scent was getting stronger—sweat and those new, deeper notes that made me want to breathe in his skin. A tang of my blood mixed in, like a reminder of how dangerous it was to relax, even now. Even for this, whatever this was. He had no magic. He didn’t even know it existed, but he was working his way past my defenses. Suddenly, I wanted to pull away—to cover my pounding heart with both hands and shield it from him. Instead, I forced myself to look up.
Our eyes met with a jolt. I watched, afraid to define the emotion in his gaze. He watched me back, dark eyes taking in my face, lingering on the scrape where I’d hit the asphalt. How many of these had he watched fade on his mother’s cheek before he tried to intervene? The ache in his eyes looked old.
He curled his fingers around mine and pressed his thumbs into the hollow of my palms. Something hot pushed its way into my lungs, crystalizing sharp and ragged. The noise outside the door seemed distant, and the threat of Hellhounds and bounty hunters and Guild bullets fell away.
“I think it might be the worst,” I whispered.
“Probably is.”
Electric certainty sank into my bones. There was a static-filled instant when we both knew we would kiss. He drew my hands forward, tucking them around his waist, and I had just enough time to feel the thrill up my spine. He leaned his forehead against mine and our chests drew so close I felt his heart beating strong.
I didn’t wait for him, just tilted my head and leaned, the bright tingle in my body intensifying as my mouth caressed his.
At first, our lips barely brushed. He exhaled. We were testing, daring each other to be the first to commit. My pulse poured into my ears, head heavy and dizzy as we breathed each other in. The scant friction of lips was terrifying—there was nothing left to disguise, no plausible denial. I could not stop myself from wanting Jaesung Park.
I moved my tongue against his parted lips, and his back tensed under my hands. Then he ducked his head and met my mouth full on. His arms surrounded me and I pulled him close, fists clenched into the shirt at his lower back.
His mouth was hot, and over the next few moments, the caress of his tongue carelessly dismantled every thought before I finished it. The rush and retreat of pleasure flushed through me, my muscles going warm and slack even as my senses opened.
I pushed the suspenders from his shoulders and heard the hitch in his breath. My hands fisted in his shirt and dragged it from his waistband. I knew where I wanted this to go, and the realization seemed to trip through him in stages. He fumbled an arm out, tipping the lock on the powder room door, then grabbed me behind the knees and hauled me hard into him.
I gasped, and for several blissful seconds, lust crowded out everything else. I let that sweet ache course out to the tips of my fingers. I wanted this. Needed it, maybe. An anchor to everything that was good and real and worth living for.
Jaesung’s hands slid up the length of my thighs beneath the dress, and it became necessary to get rid of that bowtie.
We ignored the clatter of my knife on the counter behind me. I didn’t want to think about that right now. I didn’t want to focus on anything but the way it felt to crash into someone else, using my body to give and receive something that was the opposite of pain.
His fingers curled over the waistband of my tights and tugged. I stopped caring about his shirt. One hand fisted in his hair, holding on as he dragged tights and underwear down to my knees. I went for his belt, felt the hitch in his breath.
That was when I noticed the faint buzzing. It had been going on for a while, but only now, with my hand so close to his pocket, did I realize how long his phone had been ringing.
“Do you want to-”
“Not even slightly.” He proceeded to convince me for several more seconds that anything but his mouth and hands were irrelevant. I fumbled open the suit slacks, his teeth a sharp counterpoint to the firm heat of his hands.
His phone was still going. It probably would have kept going if someone hadn’t chosen that moment to try opening the door.
We jumped, snapping back to a reality significantly colder and more immediate than the last few frantic minutes.
“Must be occupied,” said a loud voice on the other side of the door. One of Sanadzi’s sisters.
We leaned back just enough to look at each other. I watched him weigh several things in his mind and, though my body was screaming demands, I tipped my head against his chest. His heart was beating like mad.
Jaesung lifted a hand to the back of my head, holding me to him as he caught his breath.
“Unless you have anything,” I started.
“Yeah, nope. I was not even-”
“Me neither.”
“Kay. We should—this is a bad time.”
“Your phone.”
He let go, hauling his pants back up by the belt and fastening them before pulling out his phone. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay. I’m—I have to—Martial Arts. I was supposed to be there five minutes ago but-”
“You had your hands up my dress.”
“Yes. Sort of distracted.”
“I give you permission to use the truth as an excu-”
I didn’t get to finish. His hands had gone into my hair, and he was kissing me, hard and warm. There was a humid feeling to his chest against mine, sweat and heat and truncated desire. He pulled back, located his bowtie, and shrugged on his suspenders.
“I guess this will have to be part of the look,” he said.
I slid off the counter, tugging up my laddered hose and underwear. “At least your cuffs are rolled up.”
“Small miracles.” He caught my jaw in one hand and walked into me, pressing me back into the wall with his full frame. I ducked away from another kiss and pushed him with my good hand.
“Get a move on, Park.”
He flashed me a sheepish grin and unlocked the door, then ducked out.
I sank against the wall, pressing chill fingers to a face that felt feverish again. I wanted to be smart enough to regret what had just happened, and what had almost happened, and what I could not resist making happen at the earliest opportunity.
It took a few minutes to finish cleaning the blood from my shoulder. I gave the shawl a cursory wash, but the stain had dried. I hung it over a stall and ducked back out to the bar, nabbing Jaesung’s suit jacket from where he’d left it over the stool. The lining felt gentle on my injuries and wrapped his scent around my shoulders.
Everyone was sitting at their tables once again, watching as a mob of girls rushed to catch Sanadzi’s enormous bouquet. Dizzy, still a little high on desire, I laughed as Krista nearly took out Sanadzi’s sister in a dive to catch the flowers. Sanadzi bent double laughing as the two girls missed, leaving the bouquet to the tender mercy of the flower girl.
The best man emerged from behind a large projector screen, clutching his stomach as if it hurt. “N-next!” he said. He was laughing. “Next we have a special performance from the talented and s-slightly tardy cousin of the groom, and his lovely partner Maria Graczkowski.”
I covered a snort when Jaesung walked out, his hair mussed. The girl who walked out next to him was elegant, with brown hair and the long, willowy limbs of… definitely not a martial artist.
The lights dimmed, and just as the speakers let out a strain of slow string music, the girl blossomed into movement. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it had not been ballet.
She was elegant, swift and light as a cat. Every muscle, from fingertip to ankle was a study in controlled beauty. Behind her, the screen showed a picture of Sanadzi as a young woman, her travels to Africa and Prague, her university years.
Then it shifted to an image—a selfie of Sanadzi and Eu
gene together on a boat—and Jaesung stepped in. He lifted her like she was part of the air, lowered her with grace and control, and when they danced together, it was in perfect synch.
I could see the art of those leaps, the beauty of each tiny movement, but it was the power of it that struck me more than anything. All that conditioning, all those explosive movements, it was no wonder I’d mistaken him for a fighter. This just fit so much better.
“Told you we’d stop askin’ nice,” a voice said behind me. Then a sapphire mandala flared in my face, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fog pressed around my brain, cut by the sharp smell of gasoline. I clawed my way from the gooey traction of magic-induced unconsciousness over the space of several heartbeats. My brain pulsed. My legs felt cold and heavy, and when I tried to adjust my feet, I found them immobile. A thin plastic strap dug into my wrists.
Memory rolled in slow and heavy. Wedding vows. Jaesung dancing. Kissing Jaesung. I wanted to linger on that, but memory was intractable, and moved on. A blue flash of mandala.
I winced, keeping my eyes shut to the orange flicker I could see behind my eyelids.
"I think she's waking up," said a woman at my knee. Something thin and damp pressed against my wounded shoulder. I smelled permanent ink and braced for pain. It didn't come.
I opened my eyes. I was in a chair. Zip ties secured my limbs to the metal frame tight enough to bruise. Dim light revealed the chalk glyphs radiating out from my bare feet. I followed them to the graduated circles of a large mandala drawn on the floor. Those clean lines didn't hide the splattered pattern of oil stains.
Isaac had brought me to an auto garage of some sort, or the basement of one judging by the rectangle of open ceiling. I glanced around, hunting for potential weapons. Hydraulic risers, metal tool benches, and aging posters. There had to be something in here I could use.
A woman knelt beside me, drawing on my shoulder. An IV trailed from my opposite forearm. the thin red tube led to a half-empty bag hanging from a cord at shoulder height. The wide white label bore the name of a hospital, and someone had written ‘O, Rh+’ in the gap. How long had I been unconscious?
"Welcome back, sweetheart," Isaac said.
I twisted, trying to see him, but the IV catheter tugged at my arm. "Where the hell am I?"
“The interrogation room. Henard doesn’t have its own Guild headquarters, so we’re improvising.”
The woman before me quirked an eyebrow, but continued drawing on my shoulder. She wore a coverall unzipped and tied about her waist, baring muscular, freckled shoulders covered in sharpie-drawn mandalas. Though several colors of marker stained her fingers, there were rings of grease around her nails, suggesting the garage was hers.
I glanced at my shoulder. Smudges of color lingered beneath the bold dark blue she used now, and under those ghosts of past mandalas, the ravaged skin was a jumble of healed scars. I tensed.
"Why are you healing me?"
Isaac chuckled, but I kept my eyes on the woman. Was she the boss Isaac talked about? She seemed young. She touched the mandala on my shoulder. A second later it flared bright gold, and the cells around my joint went white hot.
The woman made a slashing motion, and the burning stopped. She sat back on her heels and scrubbed a marker-covered forearm across her brow.
“That’s all I've got in me,” she said.
"Why heal me?" I asked again. She gave a humorless chuckle.
“We can't question an unconscious rogue. And anyway, that—” she pointed to my chest, where the sanguimancers’ carved attempt at a mandala still made a thin white scar “—is on us."
“I’m not a rogue,” I said.
"You've used magic. And you haven't pledged to follow the Guild's laws. That's kinda the definition, hun.” She pressed her hands to her knees and pushed herself up. "Anyway, you were about to bleed out in Ike's rental, and someone opted for the leather seats.”
“Oh, here we go,” Isaac muttered.
“I—how did I….” I looked at the IV, then down at my dress. The light had been dim enough I didn’t notice before, but the right side of my dark purple dress was stiff with dried blood.
There was no way I could return it to Sanadzi now. My gut dipped at the thought. It sent a sympathetic swell of anger into my throat.
Turning my arm to accommodate the IV, I twisted to glare at Isaac. He leaned in the doorway of a small office, chewing at a thumbnail.
"It had to be the wedding." I growled. "You couldn't have waited until I was wearing pants?"
"At least I waited until your boyfriend had his up."
Heat flashed across my face, memories crowding in to be ruined by this new information. Jaesung’s hair in my hands, his mouth on my throat. Had Isaac been watching us? Hearing us talk, kiss? Had he stood there, concealed and waiting as I pushed off Jaesung's suspenders?
Would he have kept watching, had we not been interrupted?
Disgust washed through me. It must have been evident on my face, too, because he grinned and spat a shard of fingernail.
"I mean, respect, though," he went on. "I see how you convinced the muggles to keep you around."
My heart gave a violent squeeze. Rage pulsed into the hollow of my throat and I went dizzy with it. I jerked forward. Zip ties tightened, and the IV bag swung.
Then a new voice issued from the office behind Isaac.
"That is enough, Mr. McOwen," said the melodic, accented alto. A shadow moved past lowered office room blinds and Isaac straightened up.
A small Indian woman stepped past him. Light bent toward her, glowing off deep brown skin and golden earrings. She appeared to be in her thirties and though she was slender as any Sorcerer, there was an elegance to her that Guild Hunters like Isaac lacked. She wore all the metal he did, but her pierced nose and stacked bangles seemed more cultural than magical in design.
The woman stopped in front of me, lips quirking into a polite smile. Her black waves had a hint of premature silver and over her slacks and silken blouse, she’d donned a white lab coat that pronounced her: Deepti Iyengar, MD. That explained the IV.
"Miss Martin,” she said. “It is unfortunate we had to meet under these circumstances. I had hoped for a more willing exchange of ideas."
I wanted to laugh, to spit the same venom at this woman, but something about her serene smile made that response feel childish.
“That might have worked if you’d given me more reason to trust you,” I said. “So far, that hasn’t happened.”
She nodded, fingers going to a clip along the IV tube and fiddling with it. “Isaac stopped the sanguimancers from taking you. Is that not a sign of good faith?”
“No.” I shook back my hair, trying to keep my eyes on her. “That’s you protecting your interests. So’s healing me, and keeping Gwydian’s bounty hunters off my ass. Cutting these zip ties is a sign of good faith.”
Deepti’s tawny eyes flicked to me. I watched her scan my face, taking my measure with something like new, calculated interest. She clipped off the IV tube.
“I could say you have failed to show your own good faith,” she said, drawing a pair of blue latex gloves from her coat pocket. “But I do not undervalue your suffering. Given your past, a certain level of self-protection is natural.” She reached for the IV catheter in my arm, drawing it out and pressing a gauze pad over the site.
“But?” I could sense it coming.
Deepti tilted her head in acknowledgement, but didn’t answer until she’d taped down the gauze and tossed the catheter in a plastic trash bin.
“But you do not seem to understand what your parents offered. I believe if you knew-”
“That Dad said he’d join you? That Mom tossed in my cooperation to sweeten the deal this time? I know.”
“You do not!” For the first time, Deepti’s tone had gone hard. “What happened in Miami was terrible on all sides—you lost your mother, we lost four of our best Hunters, and still we failed to kill
Gwydian. But it was not considered a loss. Do you know why?”
“I still had the book,” I said.
Deepti tossed a hand in the air. “The book,” she snapped. “Perhaps that was important before we knew for certain what you were. No, Helena Martin—we did not count that night in Miami as a loss because you survived.”
I stared up at her, incredulity twisting my face. “What I am? Look, every single time you people have tried to grab me, all you’ve talked about is that fucking book, so don’t turn it around now, saying I’m some magical special snowfla-”
“You are special, Helena.” Deepti was insistent. She bent over, her hands falling to my shoulders, still bare in the dress. One rested over my spellhound tattoo, the other on my ravaged shoulder and the scar-crossed ruin of the enslavement mandala.
“There is a reason Gwydian wanted your father under his power.”
I sighed, letting my head fall back, certain I didn’t want to know whatever Deepti was about to tell me. “Am I the last unicorn?”
The blonde healer snorted, smothering the laugh with a multi-hued hand. Isaac’s smirk was a slash across his face.
“Told you she thought she was funny, boss.”
Deepti was unmoved. “Deflection is a common sign of fear. You're suffering post-traumatic stress.”
I lifted my head, prepared to disagree on principle, but the warning in those golden eyes stayed me.
“You are important,” Deepti said. “But not because you are powerful.”
“So why am I tied to a chair?”
Her lips curved, but she otherwise ignored my question. “Your father was a Rogue. We tried for years to draw him into the Guild, but he refused. We did not know who he was then, or we may have understood that reluctance.
“Magic developed across the world at different times, you see. Much like writing, or agriculture, or science. Also like those things, it developed with variation. Certain areas learned to channel magic to different effects—the Chinese had a knack for predicting the shape of magic. In the British Isles, people carved their infinite knots into stone, creating circuits in which to store power. But it was not until the people of India tamed that power for themselves that we discovered the perfect method of casting.”
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