Before Nick could ask what he’d heard, Ari pulled a jagged knife from the small of his back and lurched around the fire.
He was big and muscular—almost as big as Nick—and Cynna recoiled as he drew close. His massive hands grasped Cynna by the shoulders and pinned her to the ground. Cynna yelped. Ari climbed over her.
“Son of a bitch.” Nick sprinted around the fire. “Ari, godsdammit, let go of her.”
Cynna screeched a bloodcurdling cry, and Nick’s adrenaline went sky-high. He grasped Ari by the shoulder but couldn’t pull the bastard off. Shifting around, he caught sight of what Ari was doing. His knees held her pinned to the ground while the knife in his hand sliced through the flesh of her forearm.
Blood gushed from the wound. Ari dropped the knife and drove his fingers into her muscle. Cynna screamed and kicked out but couldn’t get away.
“Motherfucker, Ari.” Nick grabbed the male’s shoulders and yanked him back. “I said to let go. She’s not a fucking threat.”
Ari released Cynna and stumbled back, barely missing falling into the fire. In his bloody hands, he held up something small and metallic. “Not a threat? What the fuck do you call this?”
Nick’s chest heaved. He focused on the small circular device in Ari’s bloodstained fingers. “Is that—”
“A tracking device. Yeah.” Ari nodded toward Cynna. “You said she helped you escape. You sure she’s not setting a trap for you instead? They call her the Mistress, man. I’ve heard all about her in my travels. She’s Zagreus’s whore.”
Cynna moaned and rolled to her side on the ground, clutching her bloody forearm in her hand.
Chest rising and falling with his deep breaths, Nick looked down at her, fighting his first reaction to assume the worst. He tuned in to his senses. Searched his mind for what he knew as fact. And came up…completely fucking empty.
Shit. What good were powers if he couldn’t access them? Think, dammit. She could have known. He’d sensed she wasn’t telling him the whole truth earlier when he’d asked why no one was following them. She could still be working with Zagreus, luring him into some kind of trap as Ari suggested. But the way she’d repeatedly told him to leave her behind, that panicked look in her eyes when she’d come down to his cell and freed him… Those weren’t things someone still working for Zagreus would do. Not if she knew she was being tracked and that staying with him would lead to his recapture.
Nick snatched the tracker from Ari, dropped it on the ground, then crushed it under his boot. Anger coiled through him. Anger because he couldn’t get a solid read on Cynna. And because, thanks to him, she was now in even more pain. “I know who the hell she is. Why do you think I brought her with me?”
He knelt beside her, reached for her shoulder, and rolled her over. “Stay still.”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered, still clutching her arm. “He came to my room after I left you. I…I couldn’t remember clearly, so I didn’t say anything. He was livid. He saw us.” She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, breathing through the pain. “When I awoke, I was covered in blood. I don’t know what happened. I just knew I had to get out of there. That if I stayed, he was going to kill me…us. He…he could have put that…thing…in my arm then. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“Shh.” Her words were hurried, rushing together, and filled with a sense of immediacy that set off a strange protective urge inside Nick. One he’d never felt before. “It’s okay.” He shot an irritated look over his shoulder toward Ari. “Get the hell over here and fix this.”
Ari scowled but stalked their direction. “She’s lying. All females lie.”
Cynna’s muscles contracted as he drew close, but Nick pressed his hands against her shoulders to hold her still. “Don’t move. He’s not going to cut you again. I’ll make sure of it.”
Ari knelt on her other side and rested his bloody hands on his thighs. “You should just let her die, man. More humane.”
“I’m not human.”
Ari chuckled, the sound dark and slightly crazed. “That’d be too fucking easy, now wouldn’t it?”
Nick watched as Ari held his hands over the wound on her arm. Cynna’s eyes grew wide, and she struggled beneath Nick’s grip, but Nick only held her tighter.
“If you want to change your mind,” Ari said, “now’s the time to say so.”
“Just do it,” Nick growled.
Ari shook his head. “It’s your damn funeral, man.”