She turned as a real laugh finally broke free. “Miss Weston, I already have you.”
The door to the chamber slammed open, and splintering wood erupted from the denotation to shower over the stone in a thousand brittle knives. Nim fell into herself, curling her arms over her head on the stone as the pulse within her exploded. Awake. The magic was awake. Worse—a thousand times worse—she felt what the queen had been keeping from her. She felt what had busted through the door.
Magic, warm and safe and absolutely deadly with rage, rose through her.
Nim glanced up in time to see a smile spread over the queen’s face. “Warrick,” she said. “Son. So good of you to come.”
Chapter 21
Terror brought Nim from the floor, but she’d no more than pressed herself to sitting when Warrick was at her side. She stared up at him as his eyes bore into the queen’s. An unspoken message passed between the two that was not an intimation but a knowing. The head of the Trust had played him, forced him into the move.
But it was not the Trust. It had been Nim. He finally broke the stare he’d trained on his mother, and the guards who’d come for Nim retreated toward the shadows. “Leave us,” the queen said.
Nim did not hear the door close behind them, but she wouldn’t have. Warrick had busted it to shreds. His gaze fell to hers, his chest rising and falling with an intensity that was rare, even if it did nothing to match her own. He loved her. He’d risked everything for her. But his intimation only said what have you done?
Nim stared up at him. “I was making a bargain.” She had tried to save him from the very trap he’d walked into. She didn’t need intimations—her tone clearly said what have you done?
His jaw went tight, his mouth a hard line. The fury of his magic still raged as he knelt beside her, eyes flicking over her as if searching for visible wounds. The burn in her elbows reminded her that she had been hurt and that her blood was pooling on the floor. Warrick did not reach for her. Something about his response seemed as if he was afraid to touch her at all.
“Rhen said they were coming for you,” Nim said, “to make you pay for what I had done.” Her face was wet with tears that she had not realized she’d shed. She tried to will him to understand, to see that Inara would have paid the price and that she was the only forfeit that made sense.
“You don’t understand.” His voice was tired, the fury in him ebbing, formed into something cold but not resigned.
“Well, whose fault is that?” she snapped in barely more than a whisper. His answering intimation doused her momentary righteousness in ice water. Nim didn’t understand what she’d done, what she had cost them both. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t known. It only mattered that it was done and could not be taken back.
“Will the two of you eventually stop this bickering, or is this how things generally carry on?” Rhen’s voice was conversational behind them, the man having apparently come through the shattered door without a sound. He would have sensed the magic like her—or, rather, the way she might have if the queen had not misled her attentions. With Rhen’s return, Nim wished, just a little bit, that she’d brought the magic-woven dagger and might have another go at the crime that had brought her there.
Warrick had not so much as flinched. He must have sensed his brother before he spoke. Between the magic and the loss of blood, Nim was feeling faint, diaphanous. “Warrick,” she whispered, the sound a brush of air.
The head of the Trust rolled her eyes, though Nim wasn’t certain exactly how she knew that, as her own had fallen closed. Then a spike of magic flashed through her and she was on her feet, dangling weightlessly between two of the queen’s sons. Sucking in a hard breath, her head snapped toward Warrick.
His glare was on the queen. “Release her.”
His mother’s mouth twisted into something of a smile. “You know the cost.” She made a sound of utter disappointment. “Honestly, Warrick. Using magic against your own blood?”
Warrick said a curse that Nim was fairly certain she’d never heard and was entirely convinced inappropriate to be aimed at one’s mother, no matter how horrible she was. Nim was trying to process that the queen had feigned ignorance of Warrick’s involvement until he stood before them while she fumbled for the pocket at her hip. She could not feel her fingers, and her thoughts were murky. A hand found hers, moving it out of the way, and she lurched—or attempted to—when she realized it was Rhen. His expression had lost its playfulness, and he only held up a vial for her to take. Nim looked back at the queen, who appeared baffled by the exchange, then Warrick, who seemed unable to touch Nim while the queen’s magic was wrapped about her.
She’s more fun when she’s awake, Rhen said or thought. It was becoming very difficult to tell.
Nim downed the tonic, blinking hard as she lost her fingers again and the empty vial clattered to the floor.
The head of the Trust stepped closer, gazing at Warrick. “It seems you owe a debt.”
“It will be paid.”
Needles of pain teemed through Nim’s fingers. Her elbow and shoulder ached with the burn of opened flesh, and her hip throbbed.
“She stabbed an heir,” the queen said, “with your magic.” Nim was fairly certain she’d missed a bit of the conversation, but focus was coming back, and for all that was sacred, it hurt. “The answer is not complicated,” the queen told Warrick. “You know what I want. Remove that fool and take his throne.”
“You know I cannot.” The voice coming from Warrick was so angry, so raw, she nearly did not recognize it. Hopeless loathing swam beneath his anger, though it was difficult to tell whether it was for the queen or the bargains that bound him.
The head of the Trust stepped closer. “You have a choice, my son. Recompense may be paid by you or by her.” Her dark eyes skimmed over Nim hanging slackly, bleeding onto the chamber floor. “Perhaps do not wait, should you have regard for her fate at all.”
Nim thought she sensed something like a wince from Rhen, but she could not take her eyes from Warrick’s face. They had brought him into the undercity, a place he’d been bound by contract to avoid, and that was not enough, they were going to make him choose. She would take the punishment for stabbing Rhen, or they would make Warrick take it for her. Nim had the feeling a punishment crafted for him would far outweigh her own.
“No,” she said. “I’ve already told you”—her voice gave, and she swallowed hard—“I am solely at fault. This is my debt to pay.”
“Calum goes free,” Rhen said from beside her. “The terms are broken and your deal forfeit.”
“What? No!” Nim felt ragged, bruised, and spent, as if a horse had dragged her through the streets of Inara on a very long rope. “I did not break our terms. I own him.”
The queen huffed a disbelieving laugh.
Rhen cleared his throat. “Not your terms, my lady. I was speaking to Warrick.”
She stared at him. Warrick had broken his contract when he’d set foot into the Trust. Calum was free to enter the kingdom at large—what else, she didn’t know.
“Though,” Rhen told Nim, “now that you’ve stabbed an heir, your contract is void as well.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “I might have mentioned so earlier, but forgive me my fun.” His gaze shifted to Warrick beyond her. “Besides, it’s not as if our brother could not stand a bit of humbling.”