“I have heard such a rumor.”
“Don’ yee know that the reason he is not in prison for these crimes is because he have a powerful protector? One he is careful to hide? He serve General Camjiata. He was one of the people sent to Adurnam to fetch the general out of Europa and over to here.”
Vai looked at me.
I swallowed.
“Drake, in the entryway of the law offices,” he breathed, as one after another of the connections hit home. “Was the general there that morning, too? Catherine, did you know he was there? Do you know him?”
I shut my eyes rather than answer.
His tone cooled. “I had no idea.”
“Seem to me,” remarked the middle-aged man, “yee’s in bed with yee own enemy.”
The temperature in the room dropped so precipitously that everyone, except for the trolls, cried out in alarm. Several leaped to their feet. The hilt of my sword flowered under the breath of cold magic. I had almost forgotten the way the air bit into the skin, the tingle of power rising from the sword’s hilt to sting my tongue. I opened my eyes to see them all chafing their hands.
“What is this?” whispered Livvy, shivering.
I grabbed Vai’s wrist. “This is an extremely angry cold mage. Come, Vai.”
I tugged. He did not budge. Nor did he speak. Had we been in the north, I did not doubt the building would have crashed down around us, but we were not in the north. We were here.
I surveyed the radicals with what I hoped was a look portentous enough to make them let us go without forcing me to fight a way out.
“I’m not part of the general’s army. I didn’t ask to be brought to the Antilles, or to this meeting for that matter. I won’t betray what I’ve heard here because I know what it means to be betrayed, and I will never do that to another. But let me tell you this. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, not with Vai and not with the general. And you certainly have no earthly idea of what you’re dealing with, with me.”
As Bee would say, know when to stop talking and leave.
The cold had intimidated them. I released Vai and headed for the door. He followed me, as I had hoped he would. I got out the door and started down the corridor.
Verus said, “Ja, maku!” but someone called urgently to him from down the main staircase and he stepped out of view.
With his longer stride, Vai caught me just as I pushed past the beads and set foot on the back staircase. He grabbed my shoulders and pressed me back, trapping me between him and the wall, beneath the dead gas lamp.
“It isn’t like it might seem,” I said. “I can explain.”
His cold fire blazed through the gas lamp above us. “I gave you a chance to explain. So why start now when you let me walk blind into that meeting and look like a complete fool?”
I managed words. “What do you wish you knew?”
“What do I wish I knew? Where do I even start? You had no trouble telling them everything you knew about Camjiata, so if you didn’t tell me before, it was certainly on purpose. For that matter, why should I believe your story about the binding from the spirit world? You could have made up the whole thing to stop me from prying!”
Such cold surged around him that my breath steamed as mist. “But I didn’t make it up!”
He wasn’t listening as he stormed on in a voice made icy by fury. “And why stop there? Maybe Drake wasn’t the first. I have to wonder about black-haired Brennan, although he doesn’t have black hair. The handsomest man alive. A very persuasive man, with his enchanting smile.”
My heart was galloping in my breast, crashing between chagrin and exasperation. “I never! Drake lied to me. You know that. Anyway, Brennan Du is the sort of man who isn’t interested in a callow young female like myself.”
He was absolutely crushing me against the wall, his body pressed against the length of mine. I had never known you could be so agitatedly abashed and yet recklessly excited at the same time. For I wasn’t scared of him. I just needed him to slow down and listen to me.
He whispered, his lips a kiss away from my mouth. “And what sort of man do you think would be interested in a callow young female like yourself??”
Frost crackled up the wall behind me. My lips had parted but I could not speak. All I could do was tip my head back and lick the corner of my mouth in a way that made him suck in a breath.
“An infatuated dupe?” he continued hoarsely.
I slid my hands up his back. I couldn’t breathe properly, much less talk.