Page 190 of Mud

No.

I was no longer crying. The door behind us groaned when someone outside slammed something against it—the agents. I dropped my purse again as I ran to Taland and grabbed an empty golden candleholder from a display table in the middle of the room.

It all happened so fast that he still hadn’t formed an opinion about what the hell was going on by the time I was close enough, and his eyes were still wide, unblinking.

I swung my arm with all my strength.

Taland didn’t understand that I meant to hit him on the face with that thing until I did, and he fell to the floor as blood gushed from his temple.

The candleholder fell from my hand.

The door behind me exploded with what could have been a gunshot, and people came in—agents, more than four. Perhaps six or seven. I only looked at Taland, his eyesclosed, his face calm, the blood coming out of his wound seemingly black in the darkness of the room.

But then someone turned on the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and there was plenty of light to see that it was him. To silence the part of my mind that thought maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this guy only looked like Taland, and we were all just mistaken. Because no way did this happen so suddenly on this very night. On the best night of my life.No way.

Yet it was happening right in front of my eyes.

I couldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed, torn between wanting to kneel by him, wipe away his blood, kiss him until he woke up—and running until I found the edge of the world and jumped into the abyss beyond.

A man was beside me when Taland finally began to blink his eyes. Two agents dressed in black suits grabbed him by the arms and dragged him to the wall, pointing their guns at his face.

The man beside me wore a suit, too—dark green with an emerald-colored tie.

“Did he attack you?”

Taland blinked and blinked, and saw the agents at his sides, and the guns pointed at him…andme.

My eyes were dry.

“Yes.He attacked me.” Because if I saidno, I had no way of justifying the fact that I’d closed the door on the agents, and I’d attacked Taland before he made it into the Strongroom.

“Sweetness…”

My heart was in pieces.

“One moment,” the man in the suit with a heavy grey mustache said, then brought his wrist to his lips, and whispered something I couldn’t understand.

I looked at Taland.

“What…what’s going on?” he whispered.

I said nothing.

“How did it happen?” asked the man.

I shook my head. “He must have seen me following him. Closed the door with his magic as soon as I walked in and tried to knock me out.”

Each word made a bloody mess of my throat as it came out.

The man in the green suit whispered in his wrist for another moment that lasted an eternity.

Then he put his hand over my shoulder. “Well done, Miss La Rouge. Very well done. I assume you’re okay? He didn’t hurt you?”

The look in Taland’s eyes when he heard the name.

The way he never blinked.

The way he showed me exactly what he felt because I was too much of a coward to look away.

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