Page 73 of Courting War
“Oh, that’s a given.” Her lips turned into a full smile, dark amusement twisting into them. “You’re angry with me, so have it out.” She tensed, awaiting an explosion, and she rolled her shoulders back, readying for a fight.
“You want to provoke me.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
Then he would give it to her. He let go, allowing the simmering fire inside his bones to spill out. Kellyn stood up to his full height, easily towering over her. The cords of his neck tightened, and his fingers dug into the wood still between his fingers. “What the hell is wrong with you? First, you try to kill Emmett, and now you want to provoke me?”
Her brow furrowed, and she took a protective step back at the sound of his deep rumbling bass. “I killed him?”
“You killed Emmett.”
“Last I checked, he was alive.” She glowered. It eviscerated, leaving only carnage in its wake. It rattled his chest and broke a piece of his resolve, but her next words shattered it. “I saved him.Youalmost killed—”
“—You forced meto give him deadly nightshade.” Kellyn’s words were like a waterfall of mercury. Beautiful yet deadly. He took a step closer to her, and she took a step back like an intense tango, their footfalls jolting with magnetic energy.
“Nightshade has an antidote and won’t kill Emmett.” Her words rankled, twisting into sharp icicles she might stab him with at any moment. Given her temperament he wouldn’t be surprised if she could scour his flesh from his bones.
But he wouldn’t be intimidated by her.
“It’sdeadlynightshade.” He took another step forward, and she moved back, hitting the jagged wall. “They call it deadly for a reason, Morrigan.”
“Andromache administered the antidote.” She clutched the wall with her hand, using it to steady herself, her legs still shaken and weak.
“That doesn’t matter,” Kellyn growled, “you could have killed him.”
She arched an onyx brow like it was a shield. “Youwould have. You wanted to give him ricin.”
Kellyn jerked back as if hit. His heart startled and skipped a beat. “No, I was going to give himFicus carica.” What was she talking about? Ficus was clearly written on his final jar. It was a type of benign fig tree. Kellyn kept it in the game until the end because it was the most nontoxic on the table. He was certain, wasn’t he?
His palms began sweating as he thought back on the challenge. It was hard. Impossible. His biggest weakness. He’d floundered, unable to make sense of anything in the first round, all the poisons written out with their scientific names in cursive script. His brain had been waterlogged, and he had guessed on most of the jars. But by the second, he had a better grasp of the words.
Right?
“No,” Morrigan said, pausing, her face lighting up with a realization that nettled underneath his skin. It was like she saw his deepest, darkest secrets. “Do you have an issue with your eyesight?”
“No.” Kellyn gulped defensively. “My eyes are perfect.”
This conversation was getting uncomfortably close to his truth. If she delved any deeper, she might see his great shame. She might discover his stupidity.
Discover, he was abig dumb brute, after all.
The valves in his heart clenched. Anxiety cut through his stomach, and he sucked in a deep breath. She couldn’t figure it out.His life outside the Sacrifice depended on hiding his affliction from the world.
Morrigan cocked her head like a bird, her eyes cutting through him. Into him. Seeing everything. Exposing his organs and insecurities to her penetrating gaze. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect.”
“My eyesight is fine,” he snapped, not wanting her to get any closer. His anger twisted into defensiveness, and his jaw locked, the vein pulsing with the erratic beats of his heart.
“It’s the letters, isn’t it?”
Kellyn sucked in a sharp breath. The words felt like a guttural punch or a garrote strangling him slowly and viciously.
She knew.
His lungs clenched and hardened into thick, unbreakable stone.
She knew.
He couldn’t breathe.
