Page 47 of Shadow of Death

His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to contemplate his next move after I didn’t give him a real response. Had he thought I’d crumble in front of him? Beg? Tell him everything? Had he not paid attention to who I was? Or was he so convinced about whohewas? The delusion he’d built up?

“I’ll give you a few days. That’s it,” he said, trying to sound tough. “Go.”

I walked out, wondering how much time I had. My guess was that the guy wasn’t long on patience.

Chapter Twenty

I shotup in bed as the door opened.

“Relax, it’s just me,” Kicks said.

It was too late. It felt like a fist was pounding on the inside of my chest and it wasn’t ready to stop fighting yet.

I’d been lying there, concentrating so hard on overcoming the block Death had put on my powers that I’d lost all situational awareness. What if that hadn’t been Kicks walking in the door? I could never forget I was in enemy territory.

“What were you doing?” he asked as he kicked off his boots.

I sank back against the pillows, watching Kicks, who’d been out all day with the enemy. To say things were tense between us was like saying a black hole was just a touch dark.

“Trying to unlock whatever Death did to suppress my powers. I’m not sure how much time we’re going to have before things go to hell.” I waited a minute, wondering if it would do more good or bad to tell him everything that had happened today. Maybe he was right, though—I had to stop protecting him from the truth. He was my only ally in this place, at least at the moment. Whether or not that would continue was iffy in my mind, but I couldn’t alienate him further. I didn’twantto alienate him.

“I had a talk with Varic today.”

He stilled. “I know.”

He did? Had he planned on asking me about it or waiting and seeing if I was going to share? It felt like I’d pulled a solid B on a pop quiz.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Someone told Aunt Elara. She told me the second I got back. What did he want?”

I spilled all the details and then waited to see if I was going to have to race him to the door, blocking him from trying to kill Varic. It wasn’t from an overwhelming confidence he’d do it forme, but he hated his brother that much. He’d feel like this was an overstep after their agreement, and it was hard to disagree.

He looked tightly coiled but wasn’t moving. At least I wasn’t going to have to try to tackle him. Without any help, it wasn’t certain to work at this point. Although, as stiff as he appeared, I could probably knock him over with my pinky.

“Are you leaving anything out?” The edge was in his tone, the one that usually came out when he was barely keeping himself from shifting.

“No. That’s all of it.”

He nodded and looked as if he were going to win the fight against his baser instinct to go kill Varic. Which was good, because Kicks and Varic needed to be as far away from each other as possible. I hadn’t killed Kicks’ father and blown up our relationship to have him die now.

“I have this under control. We’re going to stall him until we get out,” I said.

“Do you think that’s going to work?” He gripped the wood on the foot of the bedframe, his knuckles white. The wood creaked, as if about to split.

If I said no, I wasn’t altogether sure he wouldn’t go apeshit and try to fight our way out of here tonight. But considering I’dbeen sitting here for hours with no perceivable improvement in my powers, it was hard to say yes.

“I’m somewhat optimistic.” Hopefully that would buy me some time.

His chest rose. Breathing was a good sign.

“He approaches you again, you tell him to talk to me.” His words came out through a barely unlocked jaw.

“I don’t know if that’s the way to handle this.”

No, I’d deal with Varic on my own somehow. Kicks would try to kill him. If I thought it would be a fair fight, that would be different, but nothing about Varic screamedaboveboard. Not to mention I was done sending in surrogates to hide behind.

“He’s my brother. I know him. He’s not a good man.” The wood was back to creaking as we stared off.

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