Rasha looks up through tear-flushed eyes. “Not until I’ve questioned every person here.”
“I want to go over the bodies,” I say, but the Faelen and Bron guards are already pulling Myles and me away, dragging us out the door as the hissing surrounding us gets louder. Rasha sets the maid’s head tenderly on the carpet and stands, and then her men are closing the door behind us.
“My apologies, Lord Myles, but we need to get you both to your rooms,” mutters a Faelen soldier who is clearly as much under guard as we are.
The Bron leader behind us yells at the men stationed in front of Lord Wellimton’s room. “Lady Rasha’s maid and two guards have been murdered. Lock down the other delegates.”
“I’ll join Lord Myles in his room,” I say.
“Miss, this is not the time to—”
“Do it,” Myles snarls.
The Faelen guard acquiesces only after he and two Bron men have thoroughly searched Myles’s quarters.
“M’lord,” he says after they’ve finished, “I think it wise if I stay—”
“Leave us. Go check on Lady Gwen and the others.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
The door shuts and I look at Myles. “We train.”
CHAPTER 25
AGAIN,” I GROWL.
I allow Myles’s hand to clamp onto my owner circles and resist the urge to shudder at his touch, which is clammy and cold compared to Eogan’s. As is his breath.
An immediate image of Isobel rises from the floor to stroll toward me. Her dark eyes laugh, taunting me to engage in a duel with her. For a second I expect the familiar storm static across my skin, but instead there’s a void, as if my Elemental heat has been replaced by cold. The aching hunger flares in my chest and travels up to my mouth. And for a second I swear I can taste it—the beauty, the power, the potential of her Mortisfaire blood.
I find myself gagging before Myles’s distant voice says, “Quit testing and make the first move.”
The first move.
Eogan would be furious. I should be furious. But I’m not, because that strange hunger is consuming everything but a growing hatred for Isobel and what she’s done. For what she’s perhaps already done to Eogan.
She steps toward me and suddenly Eogan is beside her. She smiles and giggles and places her hand over his chest like I watched her do that night at Adora’s. He grimaces.
My hands lash out to shove her off, to press against her skin and use my anger to diminish whoever she thinks she is. She claws my cheek in her grab for my heart. She thrusts against my chest, but my ability is already working, draining, taking. I can feel it—my fingers absorbing the dark magic she owns. Until she utters a cry and her eyes go wide and she pulls away to disappear in a black cloud from the vision.
Next I turn to Eogan to let the power tug and steal her magic out of his chest, until I can only feel the healthy thump of his beating heart.
Except it’s not healthy. There’s a greater sorcery there.
Draewulf smiles at me through Eogan’s lips.
I shove harder and twist as if to grip the very essence of him, the soul he’s devouring Eogan with, and try to yank it out—fighting every last bit of him as if I can separate them by sheer force of my hateful will. Except next thing I know my vision’s gone hazy and my lungs are seizing up. I can’t find my breath. What in—?
My legs begin shaking, followed by the floor, and suddenly the lamps and shelves along the walls are vibrating so strong I know they will fall and shatter.
I ease back and shut my eyes to block out the image of Eogan as the wraiths hiss out in the hall. How strange that I can hear them. Or maybe the sound is in my head because it suddenly feels light and my thoughts aren’t making sense. I open my eyes and turn to Myles. And discover him bent over choking for air.
Abruptly I am too.
It’s a full minute before my lungs draw in enough atmosphere for my breathing to steady. And another before Myles puts his hands on his knees and looks up at me.
“What in hulls happened?” I gasp.
“You just magnified your abilities, my dear.”
“But it wasn’t enough.” I shake my head. I can feel it in my skin—that hunger, that need. It strums empty behind my lungs and makes the growing vortex feel wider. Train faster, Nym.
“You’re aware you nearly drained the air from this room, yesss?”
“Because I can’t focus it enough. I need to narrow it in. We try again.”
He puts his hands up. “No offenssse, but I’m not sure I want to chance being suffocated in my own bleeding room. Perhaps a jaunt—”
A knock on the door sounds just before one of the Bron guards bursts in. He looks around. At the floor, the walls. At me.
“May I help you?”
The soldier’s face narrows. “Pardon, but it seemed there was an earthquake of some sort.”
“And you thought to look for it in here?” Myles says.
The guard frowns. “We just . . . I was simply ensuring you were all right. Very good, sir.”