Page 59 of The Rogue's Curse

Misha smiled at him and said, “Then it wasn’t for nothing.” After they returned the vials, he carefully laid them back in their case and set it on the workbench.

Kristina wrung her hands. “What if we’re wrong? Is it going to hurt someone? Or you?”

“I appreciate your concern, but it’s safe. The worst case is that I’ll find whoever did make Lilah if it wasn’t Shea,” Misha said with a shrug. “A dead end, but no one will get hurt.”

Kristina nodded. “I…I’m just curious. When I was still with the Shieldsmen, a witch named Armina Voss came to us. She was able to find one of our hunters by using his nephew’s blood, but she drained him almost dry. Is this enough? Do you not need her here?”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Paris snapped. As if Kristina knew a damned thing about magic.

Misha held up a hand. “It’s fine to ask. Whatever this Armina did, it’s not how I operate. There are certainly very powerful techniques that require a large amount of fresh blood, but my training is much more focused. I can’t share details of my work with you, but trust me when I say this is plenty to locate Lilah and Carrigan Shea if he made her. Depending on our next steps, I may need more, but this will get us started.”

“Okay,” she said eagerly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

He shook his head. “It’s quite all right.”

“You can go,” Paris said.

Kristina nodded, taking Sasha’s hand as they left the workshop and quietly closed the door. Paris leaned against the bench to regard Misha. “You’re sure you can do this?”

“Of course I am,” Misha said.

And despite everything, Paris was certain, too. There was something so reassuring about Misha’s honesty. He’d been blunt and quick to tell Paris that he was tiring, on the verge of collapse, because it was tactically necessary. Hell, he’d managed to rock Paris’s world with just a few words when he told him to pull his head out of his ass and let someone help him. Misha told the truth, and Paris knew that his confidence was well-founded.

“Good,” Paris said.

“You’re hard on her because she was a hunter,” Misha commented, rifling through one of the boxes. Using some algorithm Paris could only guess at, he laid out smaller packages in neat piles.

“I still don’t entirely trust her,” Paris replied.

Still turned away, Misha shrugged and said, “It seems to me you shouldn’t alienate any of your allies. You don’t have many to spare.”

He folded his arms across his chest and ignored the bait. “Can I help you with anything?”

Misha glanced back and smirked at him, making it clear he’d noticed the aversion to the topic. He shook his head. “I need to take some of your blood to begin brewing a panacea, but after that, you need to go.”

Paris raised his eyebrows. “You’re kicking me out?”

“I have to. I’m not allowed to share mágissa magic with anyone outside the Court of Thanatos,” he said.

“Not even extraordinarily handsome and charming Frenchmen?”

“Especially with extraordinarily handsome and charming Frenchmen who challenge my better judgment,” Misha said. He pawed through the cardboard boxes until he found what looked like a package of medical supplies. With expert precision, he took his sharp silver knife and cut the tip of Paris’s index finger, then squeezed it into a glass vial.

As his blood dripped into the glass, Paris met Misha’s gaze. “Lilah should be your top priority, not me.”

Misha just scoffed, then turned Paris’s hand over. He gave the vial a tentative sniff, and his eyes flared bright. “Does your curse affect your blood, or just your brain?”

“Is that a backhanded insult that I don’t understand?” Paris asked.

“A legitimate question. Do you know?”

“I don’t,” Paris said.

“How did it happen?”

“Is it important right now?”

“Yes,” Misha said. “I’m about to use magic, and I want to know that I’m not about to unleash something poisonous back in my face.”

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