Page 96 of Time's Fool

“Of course, we will—”

“No!” the word cracked off the walls it was so sharp, making me jump. “I will help her. You will stay here.”

“I—what?” I grabbed his arm when he turned back to the door, and the muscles there were tense and hard, like those in his face.

“You will stay here,” he repeated flatly.

“Why?”

“There is a battle to be fought, and I cannot predict the outcome—”

“Which is why you need me—”

“Which is why I won’t risk you!”

“Then what am I doing here?” I demanded.

“You are here so that Dorina may return to your shared body when this is done, to rest and heal. I do not know how a prolonged split might affect either of you, and you must rejoin as soon as possible. But that will have to come after—”

“After what? You fight a demon on your own?”

“I will not be on my own. Dorina—”

“May be exhausted. You need help—”

“No.” He ripped the door open, weighty and swollen with rot though it was, and I slammed it shut again.

“That isn’t up to you!”

“I am paying you—”

“And you really think that’s why I’m still here? You—”

But it appeared that he’d reached his limit, because I never had a chance to finish the sentence. Instead, I found myself slammed up against the weeping walls of the tunnel and held there, despite the fact that he hadn’t moved. Knew I couldn’t take him, I thought grimly, fighting against a hold I couldn’t even see.

Mircea glanced at Louis-Cesare. “Keep her here. I will call for you when it is done.”

Louis-Cesare’s brow furrowed; he clearly didn’t like that idea.

Which was nothing to how I felt. “You would deny me the right to even see her?” I raged. “After everything—”

“If it will keep you alive, yes!”

And I finally figured out what that edge had been on his words earlier. Not anger but fear. It was clear in his eyes, shimmering in the torchlight, and looked strange on that proud face.

I had the idea that Mircea did not fear much, but he feared this, which made no sense!

“I can take the demon!” I told him furiously.

“We are not discussing this.”

“I fought him already. That’s what that energy was, the peppery kind that felt so strange. I fought him, not the witch—”

“Take her back outside,” Mircea told Louis-Cesare.

“—that was why she threatened to drain me—she didn’t understand, the creature inside of her had already tried—”

“Did you not hear me?” Mircea asked, looking at the Frenchman.

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