“Apart from the fact that Dominic almost killed you on a whim, and probably had every intention of experimenting further? If Silas hadn’t dealt with him, I would have done it myself…” His tone was angry, but he reigned it in again, pulling his shoulders back and continuing in a more subdued manner. “Apart from that… there’s something that you don’t know. If you knew, you’d understand.”
“And you’re not going to tell me, right? You’re going to keep it a secret. You’re going to keep it locked up until it comes back around to bite me just like everything else?” I wanted to shake him violently; to shake the sense into him; to shake the smothering caution out of him. Instead, I worked to lower my tone. “Not this time, Miro. This time you have to tell me. I need to know when to play dumb and when to fight. This isn’t a battle that I can understand. I have no idea who to trust, and that is what’s going to get me killed at the end of the day.”
He turned to face me again, and I paused at the look in his eye. He gripped my shoulders, pushing me back against the car, his body crowding mine. The shock of the sudden movement caused me to pause, and I blinked rapidly, staring at his hands. I was so astounded that Quillan—careful, controlled, safe Quillan—was using his person to intimidate me, that it took me several moments to catch up to the fact that I wasn’t suffering any adverse effects to his touch. I should have been blacking out, or battling against the uncomfortable itching… but there was nothing.
“You’re bonded to four people,” he said, ducking to speak lowly against the side of my face, his breath stirring my hair onto my temple. I had stood up to him, and it seemed he was going to fight strength with strength. “You’re a strong girl, Seph. But you have no idea what you want—and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Us five, our relationship… it’s nothing compared to what else the Zevghéri world has in store for you. Yet you already spend most of your time pushing three of us away, and the rest of your time trying to ignore your feelings for—”
I growled, cutting off his accusation and fighting against his grip. He stepped forward, one of his legs pushing between mine, effectively pinning me where I stood as his hands dropped from my shoulders to my hands. I stopped fighting him immediately, and I wasn’t sure why. The move was so sudden and aggressive; I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that it was Quillan standing in front of me. He grabbed my wrists, pulling my hands up beside my head. He ducked his face, his eyes landing on mine. His stare was weighted, as it usually was, but the emotion behind it was heavier than usual. It dropped right through me, swelling into the pit of my stomach and tickling down my legs. For a moment, I thought that the scratchy feeling was back, but this was a different feeling. I would have described it as fear or uncertainly, except that it felt…
Nice?
“Go ahead,” he provoked, “push me away.”
“What the hell is this? Blackmail?” I flung my words at him, completely torn apart with confusion. “I prove that I can accept the bond and you’ll tell me all of your secrets?”
For just a moment, he seemed taken aback. He looked at his own tight grip on my wrists, and I thought I saw surprise in his face. That made two of us.
“God… I don’t know anymore.” His grip slackened. “Stop tearing me down, Seph. I’m only trying to protect you.”
“From who?”
“From Weston. From the messenger. From yourself. From us.”
“Sounds like an impossible task. You should probably give up. Take a load off. Share the burden.”
He chuckled, the sound seemingly extracted from his unwilling lips. “Let me give you a scenario.”
“A scenario?” I asked carefully.
“A hypothetical one.”
“About a hypothetical girl bonded to four people?”
“Yes.”
My heartbeat picked up immediately, and I was sure that he could tell because he turned his head from me, looking to the side as though giving me the privacy of my own fluttering hope. I scrambled for control over the barrier on my emotions and then said as calmly as I could, “I’m listening.”
“This hypothetical girl is at the end of a very taut tether, isn’t she?”
“How would I know?” I struggled to keep the impatience out of my tone. “It’s your scenario.”
“Seraph,” he warned quietly.
I huffed out a gentle breath. “Let’s say she’s at the end of her tether.”
“Now what if I told her, hypothetically, that her bonding to those four people in particular had doomed her to a certain, unavoidable fate. A fate that she will never be able to escape, save in death.”
I swallowed, averting my eyes from him. “Knowing is still better than not knowing.”
“Knowing is what gets people killed in this world.”
“Weston doesn’t scare me.” The bite in my tone finally emerged again. “He can’t see into my mind as easily as he can other people. He tried. He failed.”
“Oh really?” Quillan seemed to be mocking me, and the sharpness of his taunt was both unfamiliar to me, and perhaps a little gratuitous. “Lord Henry Weston: the most powerful member of our society—and as an extension, arguably the most powerful person in the modern world—doesn’t scare you.”