“I wasn’t.” Felix cursed her quick tongue. She stared at the floor. She shouldn’t go back to that long-ago moment of their shared history, but... “I was screaming…when you…”
“You are magus.” His cold tone brooked no argument. “What then? Continue.”
“The kitchen door was open. I couldn’t see or feel any Bringers surrounding the house—they came after. I ran in. There was…” Felix straightened, fighting the need to press her hand to her mouth or her throat. He wanted a report. Not her panicked memories. “On the floor beside the sink was a half-boot. Defleshed leg bones—the left tibia and fibula—still stood in it. From the style of the boot, I’d guess a woman in her fifties. Nothing else of her remained.”
And here was her second blunder. “Again, I reacted.” The poor woman had been eaten whole. That’s what Bringers did. She’d known that since she was a small child… But to witness it. To see the bleached bones and the arc of blood splashed up against the white of the sink. It became real. Horrifying.
Felix could still taste the bile in her mouth. The dread that spiked a chill into her blood and the need to run thick in her legs. She should’ve followed that instinct. He was right. There was nothing she could’ve done for the humans in the farmhouse.
“I put every sliver of bloodstone into the shields.”
“And trapped yourself with a Dagon.”
Felix nodded. “I know, in the first instance, I should’ve returned to the City of the Magi. Reported the attack and left it to an experienced team. And in the second instance, I had a clear way out to do the same.”
“You empathised with the humans.”
“You say that as if it’s bad. For all our magic, we are still human.”
His brows narrowed. He leaned in and Felix lifted her chin, refusing to show her fear. “We are Magi. The thin, bright line protecting the human race from the Harbingers of Death.”
Words borrowed from his speech as they stood as raw First Year apprentices in the Red Tower. As if she needed a reminder of that day.
He shook his head and stepped back from her again. “You refuse to listen. Yes, we—you—appear to resemble them.” His voice was snide, and his amber gaze slid to her, no doubt aware that her attention would be focused on the three features that made him more Bringer than man. “We are magical beings. I am proof that we have more in common with demons. They are our other half. Not these…farmers.”
Another shadow moved against the window—when had the first one left?—the smoky flicker of wings and horns just visible. Felix held back a shiver. She was not made for field work. As if she needed more proof. “And now? How do we get out of here?”
Mael frowned. “We have three options.” He ran a calloused hand over his hair to grip the back of his neck. A line creased between his brows. “We will go with the first.”
She risked a question. What more could he do to her? “What are the other two?”
“If this succeeds, they will not concern you.”
It seemed he could ignore her. She supposed that was better than some cutting jibe about how useless she was. So she stood to attention and met his gaze with a cool one of her own. “What should I do, sir?”
His mouth thinned, a tick of anger jumping in his cheek. “This is not a game, Felicienne.”
She didn’t reply, simply kept her gaze level.
Something sparked in his gaze. Probably anger. Speaking or silence. Neither won any concessions from him. “We will break the shield and you shall escape.”
Felix blinked. Something twisted in her belly. Just her? “And you?”
“Despite what the Conclave believes, I am not your concern.”
She pushed down the need to lash out against him, with curses, with fists, even with her magic. The man was impossible. She had left him once. Never, never again. Four years before, he had saved her, risked himself and through it, through her became the…creature he was now. What he was to her was so coiled and twisted within her, sometimes she hardly knew what to think about him. But did she want him to make another sacrifice for her?
No. Hell, no.
“It does concern me. I owe you my life.”
He hissed and turned away from her. “You owe me nothing, girl.” He drew back his shoulders, his jaw tight. “This building has a cellar. I will reopen the hole I punched through your shields. The banked earth and rock of the tor will disguise the breach and you can escape.”
“And leave you?”
“I am your Provost.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think me without the skill to survive?”
“It’ll take a lot of your power to repair the hole. Again. And you cannot…” Felix pressed her lips together. He didn’t need her to remind him of the changes being devoured had wrought in his body. He could no longer use crystals, use the earthmade to enhance his magic. All of his magic came from him, his own flesh. “What’s the second option?”
Again, he ignored her question. “Use this to draft in magi.” He took her hand and pressed his clear-quartz nexus ring into her palm. His expression was stony, impassive before he turned to a door beside the cracked and broken dresser taking up one wall. “This way.”
“Provost Mael.” He could not do this for her. Not again. “Sir!”
“This is not a discussion, Apprentice Hurst. I’m giving you an order. Understood?”
“Frankly, no.”
Mael’s chest lifted and the edges of his mouth whitened. He didn’t lose control—Zacharias Mael never lost control—but Felix had little doubt that the man was silently cursing her harsh and hard. “You disobey me and you’re out of the Institute. Is that understood?”
Felix narrowed her gaze on him. “What would it matter? And you can’t throw me from this place if I don’t want to go. I will not leave you. Not…not again.” Her voice broke unexpectedly and she drew in a quick, steadying breath. “So…option two?”
“My ring.”
Felix opened her hand and he plucked it from her palm. With his eyes fixed on her, dark, angered, he pushed the ring back onto the little finger of his right hand.
“We go together.”
How was that a better plan? The brethren were attracted, pulled to the house because of him. They would be drawn after him when they escaped. But she didn’t say anything. She had to trust him. He’d saved her once. Practically sacrificed all that he was just for her.
“Use what remains of your jasper to disguise your magic and stay close to me. Use nothing else. I can…protect you if your magic is untraceable.”
“Then how was it better for me to leave alone?”
Mael huffed out a soured breath. “With your magic disguised and me remaining here, the demons would have no interest in you.” Something sparked in his eyes, something dangerous that skittered her pulse. “They always have an interest in me.”
She was doing the right thing. Even as her heart pounded and she wished she’d been sane enough to take his first option. But she couldn’t. She owed this man her life. And his own.
Her magic pulsed, matching the quickened beat of her heart and brightening the air. It spiralled down her arms, warm and familiar, before it flowed around the fragile bands of jasper circling her wrists. For a moment, her living power lensed the man before her and her breath caught.