Page 59 of The Bound Mage
“You traitor,” Cormac hissed. “You’re nothing but a coward?—”
“You’re the coward,” Loren snarled, his shadows flaring around him, deepening the darkness in the room until theaetherlamps flickered and the walls seemed to shrink in on themselves. “You—and the ones who hide behind you, letting you stain your hands while they whisper in the dark.”
His gaze sliced to where Eryn sat frozen in his chair, his unlined face an unreadable mask as he watched the shadows turn their attention to Cormac, abandoning the sobbing male on the floor to swirl around the older fae in a slow, drifting maelstrom.
“You want to lay the blame for what the Arcanum did at the feet of another victim?” The shadows lashed out again, sending chips of stone flying. “I should let them tear you apart.”
“She’s no victim.” Cormac’s face paled, but his back remained straight, his head unbowed as he stared Loren down. “Sheagreedto everything they did to her. She might be your mate, but she chose her oppressor over you. You need to think about your people, not some halfblood whore?—”
Someone screamed as the black tendrils surged over the table. Cormac’s chair crashed to the ground, his knees striking stone with a sickening crack. The aetherlamps guttered out entirely, plunging the room into an eerie, living darkness that clawed up the walls and across the ceiling, forming twisting, writhing shapes that morphed from claws to teeth and back again. Cormac’s own cry came out as a croak, strangled in his throat as the shadows tightened around his neck and chest.
Loren was dimly aware of people shouting, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Power roared through his veins, the shadows clamoring for retribution. They tightened, and Cormac choked, his boots scraping uselessly against the floor as he clawed at his throat.
“You haveno ideawhat he did to her,” Loren snarled. “Younevercould have survived what she did. You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her?—”
“Eloria—stop!”
“Just let me through!” Eloria’s voice cut through the chaos surrounding him a heartbeat before her hand closed on his arm, shadowmarks already blooming on her skin where the shadows had struck her in their fury.
“Loren,” she hissed, dragging him back. “Youhaveto stop. Cormac is a fool—but he’s not your enemy. Killing him here isn’t going to accomplish anything. She’s the one who needs you right now.”
“She doesn’t want me,” Loren snarled.
She’d rejected him—and he couldn’t blame her. He’d hidden this from her. It was his fault that Cormac had been able to ambush her with this at all. The shadows should string him up right next to Eloria’s commander at arms.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’tneedyou,” Eloria argued. “Trust me. She’s going to wake up terrified, not knowing what happened or what she did. Do you thinkThorneis the person she wants there when that happens?Youare the one who should be there when she wakes up. You’ll never forgive yourself if you aren’t.”
Loren clenched his teeth, squeezing his eyes closed as he tried to clear the rage from his mind long enough to string a coherent thought together. He couldfeelher—drifting between consciousness and oblivion at the other end of the bond, all of it tinged with the bitter aftertaste of guilt. She was going to have questions—questions that deserved answers. From him. Not Thorne or Ilyana or Veria or anyone else.
“We have to go,” he said, so quietly that only the shadows that around him heard.
He hurt what is ours to protect,they hissed, drowning out Cormac’s strangled wheeze as they dragged him even higher into the air.. He deserves no mercy.
“I know.” Loren’s voice cracked as her pain swelled in his chest. “But she needs me—needsus—more than he needs to die.”
Their outrage poured over him, the whispers rising to a frenzied cacophony. For a heartbeat, Loren thought they would tear free of his tenuous control entirely and devour Cormac right there in front of the entire Small Council. Part of him almost wanted them to.
But Araya needed them. Not to fight her battles and punish her enemies—but to be there when she fell apart. They couldn’t do that if they killed Cormac here.
The shadows knew that too. They grumbled, but dropped Eloria’s commander at arms to the stones like a broken puppet. The rest of the Small Council cowered in their seats, too terrified to move as the shadows slowly gathered again at Loren’s feet. Only Eloria dared look him in the eyes, her own face pale as Cormac coughed and wheezed where the shadows had dropped him.
“Go to her,” she said. “I’ll handle things here.”
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Someone had changed her clothes.
Araya stirred, shifting in the strange, soft bed. She was wearing a nightgown of some sort—but the scent of burned flowers and ozone still clung to her skin and hair, not letting her forget for a moment what she had done.
The float—the bodies. She’d been soangry?—
Araya gasped, curling in on herself as power stirred sluggishly beneath her skin, crawling through her veins like lava. She clamped down on it instinctively, forcing it back with sheer will—but it pushed harder. Like it had tasted freedom andwantedto be let out again.
“No,” she whispered, a tear squeezing out from between her clenched eyes and sizzling on her skin. “Stay down.”
Somewhere nearby, a chair scraped. Footsteps—someone moving toward her.
