She shoved the needle in far harder than was necessary. Magnus twitched. “Haven’t I suffered enough today on your behalf, kandiri? Must you insist on punishing me, too?”
His words added fuel to the fire she was trying to stoke back up within herself. “What makes you think I’d thank you for patronizing me?”
His swollen brows drew together, stretching the hash Azolirum had given him on his forehead. “Patronizing you?”
“I didn’t ask for you to defend me. To suffer on my behalf.”
“Woman, you would never ask. You take care of that all on your own. With absolutely no help on my part or anyone else’s.”
If he didn’t already look so pitiful, Nadine might’ve struck him for that remark. That wasn’t all that held her back. A part of her wanted him to go on, to give her some other explanation for the insanity of what he had done. Because it was insane. He might as well have flown to the sun for all the sense it made.
“Why did you do it?” She stopped sewing him up. The next moments were agony as she waited for the answer that might change something between them. Something that would make it impossible to go back to how things had been.
When he answered, his voice came out in a thick rumble. “Why do you think, woman?” His eyes met hers. “You are mine.”
But you should have died.
The words were on the tip of her tongue. But just as she was opening her mouth to speak, Nadine saw that there was no need to say them. He had known. And he had done it anyway. Simple as that.
No. It didn’t make sense. No man would do so much for so little. To lay down his life, for her? There had to be some other explanation. But what?
Magnus leaned toward her. “Nadine, I don’t pity you. What I said out there, I said because it was true. I would fight beside you as soon as I would any man at your back.” He shook his head once, as though he couldn’t quite believe how she’d not yet gotten this through her head.
“I’m in constant awe of you, woman. And I can’t but think some destiny guided us here. Without you, we wouldn’t have the Eye. And if not for me? Well, I finally see why Helig has seen fit to match me with you, magnificent as you are. Sometimes it takes a man to crack reason into the skulls of other men.” He grinned. “I can crack skulls with the best of them.”
Nadine stared at him, dumbfounded. No one had ever spoken to her this way. She searched his eyes, his face, his arms and legs. Any part of him that would give away the lie, the well-hidden humor in his words. But she could find nothing. He was all genuine. Fully and purely Magnus. Every vast inch of him.
She scowled. “You could have died. Should have died.”
“I’m glad I didn’t.”
Nadine’s brows knitted together. A sudden jumble of memories skipped through her mind. He’d been so quick to claim her down in the vault, even before his brother had explained the problem with her leading men up the mountain. He’d been the first to volunteer going out across the ice. He hadn’t thought twice about diving into the water to save Samar. Each delay of the mountain had seemed to infuriate him. He was always so willing to put himself at risk, or else make concessions. Her scowl softened into a contemplative frown. Was pitting himself against the Nozverak a calculated choice? Or a deadly stunt?
This mission was important to all of them; she’d spoken true. There wasn’t a man on this mountain, or beast for that matter, who wasn’t desperate. But perhaps there was something Nadine had overlooked, something about their goals that maddened Magnus. The possibilities had her neck prickling.
Magnus shifted in the water, and it rippled around him. A dull moan rose up in his throat. Nadine shoved her suspicious thoughts into the back of her mind in favor of tending to him. She took a rag and wet it to pat at his wounds. She cleared her throat. “I suppose you think this means I’ll be at your beck and call now?”
Magnus chuckled. “Don’t worry, kandiri. I’ll be happy to do all the ‘becking’ so long as you do plenty of ‘calling.’ ”
17
Down the Throat
Nadine whispered the last word of power over her hand that clutched the Eye of Azureal. A smoky pulse of power flew from the talisman, along with a sound like the sigh of a storm pulling back the waves of the sea. Silence followed. Shrieking wails and clattering steel grew silent as the Soul Thieves’ influence left veligiri bodies.
Every enthralled creature went still in the underground cavern. Their battlefield was more of a canyon, tall and narrow, without a shred of light save what was emitted by the Ebronian’s torches. Nadine drew in her lancet, satisfied that the Eye had done its job and the skirmish had truly ended.
“Clear!” she called out, her voice echoing off walls of dark green rock.
At once, her men’s stances eased, though they still gripped their weapons. Their shoulders rose and fell from the strain of battle. The men were bloodied but not broken. Nadine performed what quick assessment she could from her vantage point. Eleven Ebronians, plus herself. Three Nozverak. Magnus’s voice carried from somewhere. Everyone was accounted for. She nodded with satisfaction.
Yudvir, there were a lot of them this time. An ogre, a pair of trolls, at least a dozen blood-seekers. Magnus had explained that the veligiri never attacked in integrated groups like this. Not unless they were enthralled. With the Eye at their command, it was almost too easy. Of course, now they’d have to wait half a day or more before the Eye regathered its power from the goddess. It was always her last resort, since she could never be certain they wouldn’t need it more later.
Once their opponents lost their souls to the Eye, they became so docile the men could move them before striking them down, which was especially helpful in the ogre’s case.
Nadine turned toward a blade-arm she’d been fighting who now stood like a dull, wavering ox, staring listlessly at the wall behind her. It was as tall as Azolirum, though quite a bit thinner and with no horns. Its brown skin looked mottled, but its most prominent feature was overly long forearms tapered on the outer edges into flattened edges of iron-hard cartilage it used like swords to hack and slash. She grinned to see its arms unbloodied.
“Strike them down!”
With her command, the Ebronians switched out of battle mode and into after-battle laborers. They slaughtered the blood-seekers and blade-arms on the spot. Nadine herself shoved her lancet into the underside of the blade-arm’s throat until the tip met resistance against its skull. Its body jerked in automatic response, but otherwise put up no resistance until she retracted her weapon. It collapsed to the ground in a brown heap at her feet. The sound of spurting blood and flesh pounding rock filled the cavern. Yudvir, the stink.
Nadine leapt back as one of the Nozverak—Hezek?—blew past her with a fang-bared hiss at a nearby torch. Nadine shuddered. Of the three accompanying Nozverak, Hezek was the quietest and most vicious. One of the few occasions he’d opened his mouth was to curse the light, as it supposedly attracted unnecessary attention. If he wasn’t cursing, he was biting out the windpipes of whatever creature was sorry enough to cross him—his signature attack, Nadine had come to understand. The under-men, with their silver, otherworldly eyes, could see in what Nadine considered total darkness. But it wasn’t as though Nadine and her men were about to go stumbling blindly through the dark. They might as well tie their wrists together, too, in that case.