Page 148 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

It doesn't matter that one of the faces of her nightmares is behind the door, so is Gurlien, and getting him to safety is more important.

Boltiex didn’t even place any anti demon traps or wards around his door, he’s that confident in his sloppily constructed stasis chamber. Just the anti-sound wards, a few trivial protections she could break, and the spells that prevent anyone from teleporting in or out.

Taking another deep breath that hurts, she grabs the magic trailing through the house and blasts the door open.

Her ears pop as it shreds through the anti-noise wards, crashing and clanging across the house. A glass breaks in the kitchen, a picture frame falls from the wall, a cheap stool splinters downstairs.

And in front of her…

Boltiex recoils back from the door, at the wood splinters flying in the room, and quick as she can, Ambra flashes a shield around Gurlien.

Gurlien, with blood viciously red dripping from his face and his arm, huddled against the ground. There’s a tie around his ankle, a quick magic spell keeping in place, and Ambra snaps that, too.

He has a cut along the top of his eyebrow, a bruise forming around his left eye, and a clean and precise line of blood around the leash tied around his wrist. There’s some sort of injury in his shoulder, he’s holding his ribs like they hurt, and his eyes are wide, his pupils uneven.

And he’s just as beautiful as he ever is.

His glasses lay broken next to him, the glass in them shattered, but Ambra can see the intellect racing across his face, the analysis, factoring her into his plans, his hand leaving the wound and going to the leash, and—

Boltiex recovers first, his hand flying to her leash,grabbing and pulling, cutting off all her powers and her abilities and everything.

There’s a trace of blood on his knuckles, and it’s not his.

Rage, white hot, floods through Ambra.

“How the hell—” Boltiex breathes, and it’s the first time hearing his voice in too long, grating along her ears.

Instead of answering, Ambra jerks at the leash, throwing him off balance, and Gurlien weaves his fingers through it.

His fingers are injured, shaky against the magic, but it’s just enough to break a fragment of Boltiex’s concentration, and Ambra uses it to shatter the wall next to Boltiex, shatter the sheetrock.

White dust blows outwards, choking them up, and Ambra ducks away, teleporting the small distance to Gurlien’s side, dropping the multi tool and clutching at Gurlien.

His hand curls around hers, and even that grip is weak.

But there’s a moment, a small breath, where his brown eyes meet hers and his lips part, as if to speak to her, before—

Boltiex grips her mind, grips her into his control, grabs Gurlien’s arm and jerks the leash off his wrist. The knot unfurls with a snap, his hand going up to his wrist and his mouth forming a perfect ‘o.’

And just like that, he’s gone. All awareness of him is gone, all sensitivity and sensation from his side of the leash, gone. All of her sense of him is just her eyes, just visual, reflecting a completely normal person with a scar of magic burned out of him.

He recoils back, and she can’t feel that. Can’t feel any ghost of movement through the leash, any terror or control or motion.

Her heart drops, and Boltiex steps her back. He’scoughing still from her explosion of dust and wallpaper shreds, but his control is absolute.

“There,” Boltiex rasps out, as Gurlien clutches at his wrist and Ambra’s forced to stand stock still and stare at him. “Finally.”

Gurlien pales, and this close she can make out the breaks of skin along his brow, the subtle crookedness of his nose. Boltiex had beat him, physically so, like nothing more than a schoolyard bully.

Ambra stiffens, just a little, and her brain tries to reach out and grasp at Gurlien, reach out to touch him, anything. Some sort of contact, some sort of recognition, something.

Her fingertips tremble, standing there, as Boltiex takes a few deep breathes, straightening himself.

“That was a lot easier than I thought, thank you, Ambra,” Boltiex says, as if she had intentionally helped him, as if the sudden pain of the leash being gone from Gurlien’s hand wasn’t wracking through her spine, even with Gurlien standing right there. “Why didn’t Nalissa just make you do that?”

He doesn’t give her the opportunity to speak, doesn’t release his control, just bends over double, still coughing from the dust.

Gurlien meets her eyes, and behind all the pain, behind all the confusion and weakness, he nods at her, something between a comfort and a command. He claws up to standing, still tied in place around his ankle, but something set in his jaw.

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