A Perfect Blood

him. I had a feeling it had a romantic overtone.

“God, no,” he said, his flush making me even more sure of it. “I only meant that your safety was my responsibility.” I cocked my head, and he added, “My responsibility not like a jailer or a parent, but as an equal. It was your idea.”

Mine? My confusion must have shown, because he said, “The curse that emancipated me? ‘I will come to your aid in a time of war’? Your idea, not mine, but an agreement is an agreement.”

My head flopped to the other side of my shoulders as I eyed him from a different perspective, but he still looked like the same irritating man, his ankles crossed and his stance confident. “So you were out there perched in that tree looking for me because of some stupid Latin phrase?”

“Why do I even try?” he whispered to the ceiling. “Rachel. Listen to me for once. I helped get you into this situation with the demons, and I am standing beside you to get you out. Whatever it takes.”

I thought of Ceri and the girls, what the loss of Trent would mean to them. My pulse thundered. I wanted to believe him, I wanted to be someone who wasn’t afraid. His eyes were on my bracelet, and I hid it under my other hand. “Trent. I’ve got nothing to keep me on this side of the lines. He knows my summoning name, so even holy ground won’t work this time. I don’t care what you’ve done, what charms or spells you’ve made, but there is nothing on God’s green earth that is going to stop that demon from taking me.”

“So you made a hole in the ever-after,” he said, and I threw my hand in the air—he still didn’t get it. “You’ll find a way to fix it. Al is broke, but only if you’re dead, which you aren’t. He’s going to be angry you hid out from him for five months, but that was your choice—deal with it. You saved the elven species, but you also have the cure for the demons’ infertility. What more do you need?”

“No, I don’t,” I said quickly. “I am not going to be a demon broodmare.”

He touched his chin in thought. “Perhaps I should have said I have the cure for their infertility. If I can fix you, I can fix them. All they have to do is trust me.”

Like that will ever happen. But my clenched jaw eased. “You’d do that? I thought you were at war with them.”

Trent’s toe scuffed the floor. “No one can remember why the war started,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to end it. It’s what my father wanted. Yours too.”

I looked at my bracelet, my heart hammering. The memory of being helpless rose up, not of simply being in a cage and watching Winona being tortured and knowing I might have been able to stop it if I hadn’t been afraid. No, it was the feeling of helplessness I’d known all my life, of being too weak, betrayed by my own body. And then the helplessness because of a lack of skill until I learned what I could do. The helplessness brought on by my own people when they shunned me, then being afraid of what I was and of what I had done. I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore. I could fix Winona. I owed her her life back.

Swallowing, I turned to Trent, but my next words died as the door opened and Quen came in, Jenks riding the ladder he was toting. My face was hot, and I knew I had a panicked look on it. Trent had something they wanted. Something they wanted so badly I might be able to bargain with Al for my continued freedom. Trent could help me, I thought. And this time I believed it. If we could hold Al off long enough for him to listen.

The clatter of the ladder being set up was harsh, and both Jenks and Quen looked up when neither Trent nor I said anything. “In the meantime,” Trent said to fill the breach, “Winona is welcome to stay. We don’t have a nanny, and the girls seem to like her.”

Jenks’s wings buzzed, and even Quen accepted that at face value, but I dropped my head, trying to lower my pulse before Jenks sensed it racing. I had to talk to Trent. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore. I didn’t want Winona living her life as a monster. I didn’t want anyone killing for me when I could use my magic and avoid bloodshed altogether. And if someone had to die, then . . . Oh God, I didn’t know if I could do that.

But I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore, and it was the scariest thing I’d ever decided. With a single-minded purpose, I hobbled forward, my hand reaching for the ladder in support.

“What the Tink-blasted hell do you think you’re doing?” Jenks said, and I started, shocked. How did he know?

“You’re not getting on the ladder,” Quen said dryly. “I can tell if the light has been disturbed.”

Oh! I took my hand off the ladder, flustered. Still leaning against the counter, Trent watched me pull back as if stung. Our eyes met over the length of the room, and when he saw my frightened, lost expression, his entire demeanor shifted. His lips parted and he pushed from the counter. Eyebrows high, he smiled faintly, a new excitement making his motions sharp. He knew. I was an open book to him. It had begun, my terrifying, I’m-not-afraid world.

“Um, I have to go,” I said, and Jenks’s wings clattered in sudden mistrust.

“What did you say to her, Trent?” the pixy demanded as Trent came forward and took my elbow, helping me to the door. “Where are you going? We just got the ladder. Don’t you want to know if this is how they got in?”

Oh shit. I was going to take the bracelet off. My heart pounded, and I felt dizzy.

Trent’s grip on my elbow tightened and he slipped his mutilated hand around my waist. “Now?” Trent murmured. The scent of wine and cinnamon filled me, and I closed my eyes, trying to stand upright, but it only made me dizzier. “Let me know what you find,” he said loudly, his voice calm under a lifetime of business dealings, but I don’t think he was fooling Quen. “Rachel has been on her feet too long. I can get her to her chair okay. Ceri will skin me alive if she passes out. I’m going to take her upstairs. Quen, a full report of what you find, on my desk ASAP.”

“I’m fine,” I said breathily, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t meet Jenks’s eyes as I shuffled out, but he was more excited about helping Quen with the light than anything else. I didn’t want him around when Al showed up. At least it was daylight. I’d have a few hours to make a new scrying mirror and try to explain before it all hit the fan.

Unless he jumps me to the ever-after, that is.

“Us,” Trent said as the door shut behind us and I looked up in the cool emptiness of the hall. “Unless he jumps us to the ever-after. Get it right, Rachel. I said I would help.”

“H-how . . .” I stammered, but he just smiled, his grip on my elbow never changing as he helped me to my chair.

Chapter Nineteen

My leg hurt, and I sat in my rolling chair, as I had done for much of the first part of my life, numb as someone else moved me around. Saying nothing, Trent smoothly pushed me through the downstairs labs until we were rising up to the first floors through a different elevator than we’d come down in. The humming, chill silence of the basement labs was replaced by the warmth of neutral carpet and soft conversation as he wove me through the front offices, skillfully evading or redirecting comments or requests from curious employees.

Almost without notice, the noise muted, then vanished. The warmth of the sun spilled in over my feet, and still I sat, doing nothing as the chair halted. I felt Trent slip around from behind me as he took a tray from someone coming in, then his beautiful voice rising and falling reassuringly as he ushered whoever it was out and shut the door with a soft and certain thump.

Then there was silence. Slowly the wonderful scent of coffee slipped into me.

My breath went in and out, and I looked up to see that we were in Trent’s office. The fake sun was coming in the huge video screen showing this year’s foals standing to take in the last of the warming rays, but it felt warm on my feet and looked real enough to me. Trent was sitting behind his desk, his feet up on his daily planner, his fingers steepled as he watched me, a curious tilt to his head, his fair hair almost in his eyes. Between us on a wooden tray was a pot of what had to be coffee and two empty cups with the Kalamack logo ghosted in silver.

“Are you okay? You kind of spaced out.” He put his feet on the floor and leaned over the desk, an excitement I’d never seen before sparking in his eyes, making them almost . . . mischievous? “I’ve never said that before. Spaced out. But that’s exactly what you did.”

Still feeling numb, I looked at the carafe of coffee, then my silver bracelet, the Möbius strip with Latin etched into it wrapped around me, shining in the sun. “Did I?”