Page 116 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

He laughs, as she takes a moment, adjusting herself to the magic of the room.

“You can’t feel the line?” Ambra murmurs, and he shakes his head. “Be glad.”

The line itself is a few stories underground, written in copper ink into the very grout of the tile, but it’s strong enough to impact even up here.

Nalissa’s always been the strong one. Not as combat forward as Korhonen, but strong.

Gurlien snags her hand as they walk, yanking her backinto a bruising kiss, searing into her, before he releases her, just as quickly, leaving her winded.

She gapes at him from behind the glasses, and he has the temerity to look smug.

“Distracted that guard,” he says, pointing with his chin at a heavily muscled man turning away from them, an earpiece curving around his ear. “He noticed you.”

“I don’t think you can kiss me each time a guard looks at me funny,” Ambra informs him, but despite it all, she finds herself smiling.

“It’s worth a try,” he says, self-satisfied, and some of it is bravado over a layer of trepidation. “I’ll have to try it elsewhere.”

It’s a manifestly ridiculous conversation, but it carries her down another hall, through a cramped corridor where an impromptu bartender pours a toxic green drink for a mob of drunk women.

One of them’s even wearing the same mesh shirt as Ambra.

There’s a demon mark on the far end of the wall, traced over the ridges of skulls, to prevent her from getting into the room behind it.

Once, when getting the tour and Misia was still alive, they told her that there were protected books beyond that mark, and the curiosity had distracted Ambra a lot more than they thought it would.

But that’s not their goal this night, even though the same burn of curiosity rushes through Ambra once more.

If they can do this subtly, if they can kill Nalissa and get out without anyone knowing, she’ll send Gurlien into there. Grab whatever books catch his fancy and get out.

There’s a bright ward at the top of the other staircase, an ugly shining gold thing, almost neon underneath the artificiallights, and a guard stands underneath it. A clear ‘nobody allowed past here’ sign.

The ward wouldn’t stop her. It’d hurt, she’d have to shield Gurlien, but it wouldn’t stop her.

The guard, with her large biceps and brownish hair scraped tightly back into a bun, scowls at a set of drunken idiots, who promptly turn away from trying to stumble down the stairs into privacy.

And there’s something about her face that’s familiar.

Ambra can’t tell where, she wasn’t one of the research assistants, she wasn’t one of the guards assigned to the room when they cut into her, but she must’ve passed this guard somewhere. Seen her before, just enough to recognize but not enough to memorize.

Which means she must’ve seen Ambra, possibly before they even cut Misia out.

Deliberately turning her back on the guard, Ambra hooks her fingers in Gurlien’s belt loops, pulling him closer. “Are you sure not a little bit of murder?”

His lips part and his eyes go down to her scar. “Please, only Nalissa,” he manages after a long second, and his hand curves along the rise of her hip, the mesh shirt the only thing between his touch and her skin.

The touch feels right.

“Then this might go loud,” Ambra murmurs, leaning in close to him like they’re more drunken idiots.

For at the floor of the guard, magic swirls, subtle, a captivating curl that begs to pull Ambra’s attention from everything in the room.

His lips part once more.

“I’ll shield you,” she says, and he huffs out a laugh. “There’s a pain deterrent ward, you won’t feel anything.”

“That’s less than reassuring, but sure.” Despite thesarcastic words, he cradles her face, his thumb swiping over the still sensitive edge of the necromancer wound. “Will you feel it?”

Unbidden, tears spring to her eyes at how gentle the touch, at the care he’s giving her at this very moment. At how she’s dragging him into danger and he’s still taking his small motions to soothe her.

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