D stiffened and so did Eliana. Calling a warrior weak was the worst possible insult. Had it been anyone but the King, the offender would have been dead by now. She couldn’t understand why he was treating D this way. What was
wrong
with him?
With a clenched jaw D replied, “They got it just as bad as we did.” His voice turned scornful.
“
Sire.
”
Their mutual enmity crackled in the air, raising the hair on her arms. As her father stepped forward with a snarl, Eliana made a split-second decision and stepped between the two bristling males.
“I’m sure the particulars of who injured whom can be sorted out later,” she said quietly, gazing calmly at her father. For her own selfish reasons she didn’t want to see done to D what had been done to Celian, and she knew his only chance was if she intervened. “The good news is the
Bellatorum
are alive, and the sooner they get to healing, the sooner they can go back out and take care of the problem.
So perhaps since Demetrius was kind enough to come straight here to inform you of the problem, he might now be allowed to go to the infirmary and have his injuries tended?”
A beat of silence. Her father’s wolf-eyed examination of her face.
For the millionth time, she was thankful he couldn’t read her mind. The impenetrable veil that surrounded her thoughts was another of her Gifts, one she secretly referred to as The Blessing because she had far too many dangerous secrets, secrets that other members of her colony couldn’t afford to keep.
Not the least of which was her forbidden fascination with D.
Finally Dominus smiled, then sent a flinty gaze to the bloodied warrior in the doorway. “Is there any imminent danger?”
D shook his head. “No. They don’t know where we are. They couldn’t follow us after the
polizia
arrived—”
“
Polizia
?” Eliana gasped. He might as well have said
butcher
. Over the past few years alone, six of her kin had been killed by the local police. It had been all over the newspapers; the outside world assumed some deranged exotic animal enthusiast was releasing captive panthers into the suburbs.
D nodded, his gaze averted from hers. “Shots were fired. We got out unscathed, but one of them may have been hit—”
“You’re hardly unscathed!” she protested.
Dominus said, “Unscathed or not, you and the rest of the
Bellatorum
will find yourselves well enough to attend the
Purgare
, Demetrius. Do I make myself clear?”
D inhaled sharply and grimaced, a look she had seen on a hundred different faces when her father was displeased. No one ever spoke of it—no one dared—but Eliana had a dark suspicion that her father’s mind reading wasn’t his most potent Gift.
“Perfectly,” said D between clenched teeth. He gave a stiff, pained bow.
“Eliana.” Her father turned to her with a small smile, some unknown intent burning bright in his eyes. “Would you be so kind as to accompany Demetrius to the infirmary? He looks like he could use some assistance.”
D blanched. “I’m completely capable of—”
“Of course,” Eliana said, cutting off D’s growled retort. She was anxious to make sure the warrior was all right, even more anxious to have a few moments alone with him, though of course he would practically ignore her, as usual.
With a clenched jaw, D bowed again, turned, and limped from the room. Her father drew her nearer, and they watched D’s muscled legs take him, haltingly, down the shadowed corridor.
“And see if you can get any more information from him,” her father murmured, eyes narrowed.
She sighed, suddenly mournful. “I don’t know why you think I’d be able to. He can’t stand me.
Haven’t you noticed? He can barely even
look
at me.”
Her father looked pleased by that and also inexplicably amused. She understood the pleasure; it was, after all, forbidden for the two of them to be together. He was not of her caste and so there was no chance for them, and that’s how it had always been, forever. She’d resigned herself to it. But the amusement? What could it mean?
Still smiling, her father said, “Yes. There’s really nothing worse than wanting something and knowing you can never have it.”
And everything inside of her ground to a halt.
D
wanted
her?
A million memories flashed through her mind, a million looks he’d sent her, hot and fleeting, his jaw as hard as the flat line of his mouth. The way he recoiled whenever she came near, the way he sometimes flushed. She’d always thought he despised her, she’d felt certain that jagged ache in her belly when he was near was only one-sided, but...could it be?
She stood breathless with the possibility. But what was she willing—if anything—to do about it?
“Don’t look so surprised, my dear,” said Dominus, drolly. “It’s rather obvious to everyone but you.” His face darkened. “But there’s something else going on with him lately. I think he’s hiding something.” He glanced at her. His dark brows cast his eyes in shadow, but they glinted with a new cunning. “This requires a more delicate touch than I have patience for today. Go along and see if he’ll tell you anything interesting, Ana. See if he’ll tell you anything he won’t tell me.”
He gave her a gentle push when she stood frozen like a stalagmite to the floor.
“Yes, yes,” she murmured, elated, trying very hard not to show it. “I’ll...go...talk to him. Now.”
Then she remembered how to move her feet and used them to walk slowly away, her step casual and slow because she felt the weight of her father’s gaze on her back like two heavy, cold hands.
Lix and Constantine were already laid out on two cots in the infirmary when D limped in, muttering curses.
“
Quomodo ire
?” said Constantine, lifting his head from the pillow to watch D stumble toward another empty cot at the end of the long, brightly lit room. It was one of the only bright places in the catacombs, awash in harsh fluorescent lights run by generator. The
Bellatorum
were too few and too valuable to Dominus to be subjected to surgery by candlelight.
Celian lay on his stomach on a cot near the door, loudly snoring into his pillow.
“It went just wonderfully,” spat D, and dropped to the bed. The metal frame squealed and nearly buckled under his full weight.
It went exactly as it always does
, he thought, furious.
The King was so understanding and supportive and thankful and even gave me a big hug at the end.
He stared up at the curved ceiling and did not look over when Eliana’s soft step echoed through the room.
“
Principessa
,” said Constantine and Lix in unison, surprised.
“No, don’t get up,
Bellatorum
,” she insisted, “please. Rest yourselves.”
D closed his eyes, unwilling to watch them—injured—try to rise and bow to her, unwilling to watch her approach. Just having her scent in his nose and her lilting voice in his ears was torture enough. Pain throbbed through his body, and he knew it wasn’t just because of his injuries.
Someone new entered the room. He cracked open an eye to see one of the
Servorum
—young, female—carrying a tray of bandages, salves, and metal instruments. She went to work on Lix first, as his leg was badly shredded, nearly bitten clean through by that huge male at the club. The
principessa
murmured something to her. He caught
good care
and
please
. Clenching his teeth, D closed his eyes again. He heard movement, low conversation, the sound of Lix’s barked curses as his wounds were attended.
A hanging curtain was drawn around the bed with a swish of rings on a metal rod, and then Eliana was beside him. “I need to take a look at that arm,” she said quietly.
His eyes snapped open. He stared up at her. Light flared like a nimbus around her head, obscuring her face. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down with a palm flat on the center of his chest, and the skin-on-skin contact was so unexpected it stunned him into submission.
“It’s fine,” he said, hoarse, pulse thudding in his ears.
“Puh.”
He didn’t know what that meant, so he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on not looking at her. He stared at the bare rock wall, brown and bumpy, but God, how he wanted to look at her.
Pixielike and delicate with the elongated limbs and grace of a ballerina and that shock of choppy dark hair that on anyone else would have looked masculine but on her only served to more perfectly highlight the flawless symmetry of her features, those almond doe eyes—
No. He didn’t need to look at her. He’d already memorized it all. He closed his eyes, and beneath his lids, she danced.
Her fingers on his skin, tentative, a flash of pain that stabbed through his gut and made him shudder as she probed the deep wound on his bicep. Her gentle sigh, a tingle as her breath, featherlight, brushed his bare chest. He heard a clatter as she pulled over a rolling metal tray of supplies from its position against the wall.
“I’d ask you if it hurts, but I already know what the answer will be.”
She sounded dissatisfied. He wondered why, then screamed silently at himself to
stop
wondering why.
He breathed in. He breathed out. He breathed in again. She touched a pad soaked in alcohol to the edges of the wound on his arm and he flinched—even that minor contact, even when it brought pain—it was too much. It made him think of things he could never have. It made him
ache
.
He brushed her hand away. “Leave it,” he said, hard. “Have the
Servus
do it. You shouldn’t even be in here. This is no place for you.”
There was a moment of silence, then she sighed. “Oh, Demetrius.”
Startled by the quiet sorrow in her voice, he opened his eyes and found her staring at him, a furrow between her arched brows. She sat down on a stool beside the bed and dropped her gaze. Her lashes made a curving dark smudge against her cheeks.
“What have I done to so offend you?” she whispered.
He could not have been more astounded. “Offend me?
Offend
me?”
He repeated it twice because he couldn’t think of a single coherent thing to say. She’d never done anything to offend him. On the contrary, she’d done everything to
entice
him, to enthrall him, to make him dream of her in night-sweat agony—
“I know I’ve done something because you are always so...so cold, but I don’t know what it could have been because I only want to...” She glanced up, her gaze lingered on his lips, and his stomach clenched to a fist. “My father has asked me to attend you, and so I must, but...but if you wish it I can tell him...that you’re fine, that you don’t need my help—” D couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and grasped her wrist. “I do want you—I want you—
your
help
,” he corrected, stumbling over his words in his rush to get them out, “and you have done nothing to offend me. On my life, I swear it.”
She sucked in a quick breath. Her eyes widened, her mouth made an “o” of surprise. The look on her face was pure revelation, amazement that turned quickly to something that had he not known better he would have thought was desire.
His body didn’t know the difference, however. Heat saturated the air between them, rushed pounding to his groin.
He released her wrist as if her skin burned him, which it did. He lay back against the cool sheets and closed his eyes once more, thinking that of all the things her father could have done to torture him, this was by far the worst.
Forbidden fruit was always the most tempting.
The clock on the wall, ticking, the low drone of fresh air that was pumped through the catacombs, Lix and Constantine flirting unabashedly with the
Servus
at the other end of the room.
Then Eliana’s voice, low and tentative. “I...I’ll need to clean the wound first, before I can suture it. It will hurt, but I’ll try and be as gentle as I can. All right?”
He nodded, then because he didn’t want her to think he was being cold, added, “Yes. Please.
Thank you.”
He hissed a breath through his teeth. What a disaster.
She worked on him a while in silence, wiping away blood and raindrops with soft towels, cleaning shallow scratches with pads dipped in alcohol, trailing her bare fingers over his skin. Pain and yearning lashed through him hot as the sun, and he wondered if she knew exactly what she was doing to him as she leaned over him, warming him with her scent and her nearness, addling him as if he’d had too much to drink.
He stiffened with a thought: Was this a trick? Was Dominus using her to—
“Here come the sutures,” she murmured. “Please hold as still as you can.”
The pain of the needle was nothing compared to the pain of lying half-naked next to her, thinking illicit thoughts, wondering if she was, even now, manipulating him. A little noise escaped his throat, and she froze, misunderstanding.
“I’m fine,” he said, jaw tight. He nodded to emphasize it. “Solid as a rock. Go on.”
She did. It was quiet between them for a moment, but not peaceful. He managed to keep his breathing even with an astonishingly difficult exertion of will.
He said, “When did you learn to do—this?”
She made a sound in her throat. Though sardonic, it was low and feminine and sent a rash of gooseflesh up his spine.
“Caesar used to pick a lot of fights when he was younger. He never won. But he didn’t want Dominus to know, so I had to be the one to fix him up. I learned early on to make sutures so fine they’d never even leave a scar.” Her voice took on a melancholy edge. “Learning new things has always helped me pass the time.”
There was a beat as he processed that. His regard for her stood in exact opposition to his loathing for her brother, who, though highborn, was unGifted. And the kind of coward that had to pick on others to make himself feel bigger. He wondered what it had been like for her, kept like a prized, exotic bird in a cage her entire life, cleaning up her brother’s messes.