Her face was pale. “Belial, the other day when I was coming home, I was sure someone had been following me.”
I held back a sigh. “And you didn’t mention it until now?”
Melisande raised an eyebrow. “I was distracted. There was a lot happening.”
I wasn’t going to put the blame on her shoulders. Not when she’d just come so close to having her heart split in half, literally. “From now on, tell me when you think something is off. If anyone wants you dead, they’re going to act while Dis is in total upheaval.” I kissed her forehead, letting her know I wasn’t blaming her. “I’d rather be on defense until Adranos gets the Ninth Circle under his control.”
She nodded, her hand rising to cover the wound again. “Thank you, Prince Leviathan. I owe you for this.”
He cocked his head, and finally waved her off. “Go. Heal yourself.”
My mate carefully stepped over the puddle of spilled oil, managing to avoid stepping right into the blood of the dead assassin.
Leviathan just looked at her. “Don’t even think about apologizing for that.”
I held back a snort. Leviathan was notorious for hating both thanks and apologies, or basically anything that forced him to interact with other people from outside his Circle.
Melisande just nodded, still pale, and rounded the mess of blood and oil. I followed her closely, coming down from the high-alert adrenaline rush of near death.
All I could see in my mind’s eye was what could’ve happened if I hadn’t seen the assassin, or if they’d decided to strike while she was riding on my shoulders.
I was just fortunate roaring in her face had caused her to flinch low enough for the bolt to miss her.
Lost in dark thoughts, I didn’t realize we were in the Seventh Circle until Melisande reached up and gripped my face with her uninjured arm.
“Stop that,” she said, scowling again.
“Stop what?” I replayed the scene my imagination had conjured, Melisande slumped over my neck with a bolt through her throat, bleeding into my fur as she choked her last. Her light, and Sarai’s light, going out forever.
“Dwelling on what could have happened,” she said, her tone just shy of snapping. “We’re both alive, and we’ll be more careful about watching our backs next time.”
I couldn’t help but smile despite my darker thoughts. “You’re an optimist, love. I would prefer to go down to Treachery right now and root out every last one of those cowardly worms.”
She shook her head. “Not now. Help me clean up this blood, and maybe by the time we’re done, you won’t want to start a rampage.”
“I always want to start a rampage,” I said truthfully, but she’d already taken my hand and started dragging me back to the arena. She knew that given half a chance, I’d be prowling, on the hunt and ready to kill.
Melisande bleeding. Melisande dying. The could-have-beens swirled in my head like a black storm.
For all her optimism about next time, I still had the smell of her blood in my nose.
9
Melisande
“I think it’s done bleeding,” I said dryly, watching Belial soak a cloth with a healing solution for the twentieth time before he pressed it to my shoulder.
He wasn’t smiling or at ease, not my usual devil-may-care Prince of Wrath. He focused on cleaning my wound with laser-like intensity, his brows knit together and lips pressed flat, even though his arm was still coated with a glaze of his own dried blood.
“Belial.” I gripped his arm, stopping him from going any further. “It’s not your fault. It’ll scab over and be healed in a few days, no big deal.”
His eyes flicked up to mine, the yellow sparks glimmering like fires drifting on an aquamarine ocean. There was so much rage behind that look that I felt like my breath had been knocked out of me.
I understood perfectly well what he was feeling. If someone had come within a hair's breadth of murdering one of my mates on my watch… well, I’d be furious too, barely able to let them out of my sight.
But he couldn’t shoulder the burden alone. I was just as culpable for forgetting something that could’ve been important, for being distracted instead of passing on important intel.
Hadn’t I already learned that there was no such thing as too much knowledge? If I felt so much as a tickle of foreboding, I was passing it on now, no matter what was happening around me.
“It was this close, angel.” He raised his hand, pinching two fingers together so they barely touched. “This close. If I’d seen him a second later, you and Sarai would both be dead.”
He grimaced involuntarily, his lips drawing back over pointed teeth, then leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine. “I don’t want to be the overbearing mate,” he told me. “I don’t want to lock you in a room for your own safety. But I understand how appealing the idea is.”
The poor guy couldn’t stop beating himself up. I cupped his face in my hands, tracing the downturned edges of his lips with my thumbs. “You know I’d go on a hunger strike. Look at it this way… if you hadn’t been with me, my time would’ve been up. Instead of shouldering all the blame, just be glad you were there too.”
He closed his eyes, black lashes casting shadows over his cheeks. “I need you to keep your eyes open, Melisande. We can’t cover every window of possibility they might use. Just stay on your guard.”
I smiled despite myself. “Are you reading my mind now? I will. I should’ve told you about the feeling of being watched, but from here on out, I’m not going anywhere blind again.”
He let out an inaudible sigh, his shoulders slumping a little, and nodded.
I held back my own sigh. What else was there to do but keep my guard up? So much needed to be done, I couldn’t just be packed away in a box like fragile goods until it was all over. They knew I’d fight tooth and claw if they even tried to lock me up.
It was on my shoulders to take care of myself.
I felt an odd sensation in my abdomen, and took Belial’s hand, pressing it against my belly. “Sarai is in agreement.”
The feeling of a flipping goldfish strengthened for several frenzied minutes, and by the time she’d settled again, even Belial was smiling.
“Don’t be worried,” I breathed in his ear, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I won’t let anything happen to us.”
He embraced me in return, his arms looped around my waist. “I just have a dark feeling,” he said into my shoulder. “A feeling that the worst storm yet is looming on the horizon.”
“It’s just a feeling. It’s natural to feel that way.” Especially after all we’d gone through to get to this point.
Belial shook his head ever so slightly. “No. I’ve had these feelings before. It’s more of an instinctual premonition.” He looked up at me, eyes bleak. “And every single time, that instinct is right.”
I stared into his eyes, my heart pounding in my throat. Remembering the chill of foreboding I’d had while the High Priestess told me there was nothing to be done.
“Then we weather the storm. We’ll make it through. I promise.”