“What do you plan to do with her?”
The founder of the Angel stood over Temple, watching his shallow breath, the barely-there rise and fall of his massive chest, the way his normally brown skin had gone sallow under the threat of death. “I shall kill her myself if he dies. With pleasure.”
“Lowe thought she’d betrayed him,” Bourne said.
“She tricked us all.” Chase did not look up. “I did not think she had it in her.”
Cross raised a brow. “She faked her death and blamed him for it.”
The door opened again, and Philippa, Lady Harlow entered, out of breath, spectacles askew, Asriel on her heels with hot water and linens.
Pippa ignored everyone in the room, heading straight for Cross, touching her husband’s shoulder in a fleeting expression of comfort. After Cross lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, she turned her attention to Temple, running her fingers along his shoulder and down the skin to the place where the hilt of Lowe’s knife protruded, perverse and unnatural.
She pressed at the flesh and Temple groaned.
“You hurt him,” Chase said, warning in the words.
Pippa did not look back. “That he can feel pain—that he can protest it—is a good thing. It indicates consciousness.” She turned to her husband. “The surgeon left once the first fight was complete. They’ve sent several men to search for him, but we mustn’t wait. You must pull it out. Straight and true. We must treat this wound before—”
She stopped. No one in the room needed hear the rest.
“And if it’s somehow keeping him from bleeding out?” Chase asked.
“If that’s the case,” Pippa said, her tone turning gentle, “then we prolong the inevitable.”
“Lady Harlow, while I am certain that you are exceedingly competent in all areas of science,” Chase said, “you will forgive me for questioning your skill as a doctor.”
Pippa paused, looking to Cross. Waiting.
“In light of the current circumstance, I shall ignore the tone you’ve taken with my wife,” Cross said. “We cannot wait for the surgeon. It could be hours.”
Chase swore, the reveal of emotion from one so stoic harsh and unsettling for the rest in the room.
“He won’t die,” Bourne said, the words half vow, half prayer. “He’s Temple. Stronger than all of us. Haler. Christ. He’s big as an ox. Unbeatable.”
Except, he had been beaten.
“Bring me the girl,” Chase said.
Cross was simple and direct. “No.”
Bourne was more colorful. “Over my rotting corpse does that bitch gain access to this room.”
Chase did not rise to the anger. “She will see what she’s done to him.”
“I would prefer she experience what she’s done to him.”
Chase looked to Asriel. “Bring me the girl.”
Asriel did not hesitate again. Chase’s will was done.
“You watch her. She’s as likely as her brother was to take a knife to any one of us.” Bourne lifted his hand to his eye. “And she’s got a surprising right cross.”
Pippa looked to him. Her wide eyes blinked once behind her spectacles and Bourne resisted the urge to fidget. “She hit you.”
“I wasn’t expecting it.”
Cross couldn’t resist. “I don’t imagine you were.”
He returned his attention to Temple’s wide expanse, watching as Pippa cleaned around the knife, her task Sisyphean—blood blossoming anew with every swipe.
After long moments, she said, without looking up, “You can’t plan to reveal yourself to her.”
Chase looked to her. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“She can’t know who you are,” Cross agreed with his wife. “She’s not to be trusted.”
Pippa brought a clean cloth to Temple’s brow as they all watched, wiping away the sweat and sawdust that clung to him from the ring.
Bourne spoke, “If she knew . . .”
The words trailed off, completion unnecessary.
If Mara—if anyone aside from a trusted few—knew Chase’s true identity, the Angel would be in peril.
And the Angel’s peril belonged to them all.
There was a gruesome painting of Prometheus on the wall of Mara’s prison cell. A torture scene.
The hero lay prone, chained on his back to a rock, his face a portrait of agony as Zeus, in the form of a wicked black eagle, tore at his flesh. Punishing him for insolence. For stealing fire from the gods. For thinking he could beat them.
It was a terrifying piece, enormous and threatening, no doubt designed to make those who defied the Angel aware of the consequences of their actions and amenable to confession.
A vision flashed, Temple collapsed on the floor of the ring, the life spilling from him as she screamed.
Kit had stabbed him. With her knife.
Fire from the gods.