Page 6 of Kiss the Dawn
He swallowed hard.No apology necessary. I understand. I put the distance between us the other night when I?—
Are you serious? This has nothing to do with you not wanting to date me. I just…Lorenzo was there, and he handled it. I was too shocked.
The tension in his jaw eased.I’m sorry. Of course you were. And I have no doubt Crush will get your team back.
The doorbell rang, and I let Merry and Holly in. They’d insisted on getting food, saying we needed to keep our strength up, although I doubted that I’d be able to eat a bite until Crush called to say he had my friends.
They set up on the kitchen island anyway. There were four stools there, and the sofa, so we’d have to make do.
Despite my lack of appetite, my stomach grumbled as the aroma of pizza and garlic bread filled the room.
“I got paper plates and cutlery too,” Holly said, setting another bag on the island.
If I was going to be using this place, I’d need to think about going shopping soon. The mundane thought felt wrong considering the situation we were in, so I filed it away to worry about once I got back from the Isle.
The doorbell rang again.
I’ll get it.Kaster vanished down the hall.
I unpacked the paper plates. “Did you send a Raven to Haiden?”
“Yeah. I told him not to worry,” Merry said.
The smell of woodsmoke and leather drifted into the room, bringing Hemlock with it. His dark hair was artfully tussled and beaded with water, and his calf-length coat was also speckled with it. When had it started to rain?
He shrugged off the coat and hung it up before regarding us all with a wary frown.
“What happened?”
“Padma and Edwin have been taken by a bounty hunter named Shay.” I quickly filled him in on the events of the last few hours.
“You can’t leave,” Hemlock said. “We need you here.”
“She can leave,” Lorenzo said as he entered the room. “And she will. But she’ll be back. I can promise you that much.”
Hemlock’s hands flexed, and the next momentthere was a coin skating across the knuckles of his left hand. “Mageri.”
“That’s right,” Lorenzo said, raking Hemlock up and down. “I don’t have to guess which Tepes brother you are.”
“This is Hemlock.” I stepped between them, confused by the strange charge in the air. “What is going on here?”
“He can sense the otherness of my power,” Lorenzo said.
“It’s fine,” Hemlock replied. “I’ll get used to it in a moment.”
Mageri power came from a deal with the fae. It’s how they’d been created, but Lorenzo was the first of his kind, the first to be able to manipulate the power of weave and miasma. Power that was vastly different from Hemlock’s, which left me wondering why he hadn’t reacted to Holly strangely. Her power was obviously not as potent as Lorenzo’s.
“Is the consortium providing protection?” Hemlock asked Lorenzo.
“It is. The Circle can’t harm her without inciting a war with the mageri.”
“No one wants that,” Hemlock said. “The stakes are too high, and the focus needs to be on maintaining a balance.”
“Exactly.”
The two men exchanged a look of solidarity on the matter.
“I’ll keep her safe,” Lorenzo said again. “You have my word.”
