Page 84 of Diamond Kisses

I didn’t study faces.

I didn’t want to know.

Rain continued to fall from the sprinkler system, hissing and splashing all around me as I darted back into the fortress.

I almost ran straight into Kirk who staggered out of the games room, soot streaking his face, blood dripping down his arms.

“Kirk.”

He blinked, dead-eyed and barely alive. “Ily, I....” Raising his hands, he frowned as if he couldn’t remember how he’d bathed in crimson. I’d always thought he looked like a Viking with his tall frame, blond hair, and slightly wild eyes, but now he looked as if he’d stepped through time after slaughtering an entire medieval village.

Looking past him into the room where a billiards table waited along with dart boards, chessboards, and so many other games, I spied the reason for all the blood.

A Master I didn’t recognise lay in the middle of the carpet—his face caved in thanks to the billiard ball used to smash his skull apart. The black eight ball sat in a pool of gleaming red, streaked with evidence of its involvement.

Kirk’s hands shook as he stepped toward me, his gaze beseeching, broken. “Help me. Help me bring her back.”

I flinched as he crashed into me, slamming me into a wall. Water hissed over our shoulders, raining, always raining. “Suri. She left me. She’s hiding. But…we’re fighting back. She can come home now. I’ve made it safe for her. See?” He grabbed my cheeks, smearing me in the Master’s cooling blood. “Help me find her, Ily.Please.”

My heart cracked all over again even as nausea rushed up my throat.

God, his mind had snapped. How many others had snapped too? We might lose today or win today, but none of us would walk away from this without lifelong, soul-crippling scars.

“It’s okay, Kirk.” I squeezed his forearms, my skin slipping on his. “Just let me go, and we can—”

“Do you know where she is?” His fingers tightened on my temples.

I winced as he added yet more pain to all the rest. A flash of light-headedness made me sway. “No. But if you—”

“You’re hiding her from me. You’reallhiding her. No one will tell me where she is!”

“Kirk, stop—”

“No,youstop!” He pressed his nose to mine, snarling right in my face. “Tell me where Suri is and—”

“Kirk.” A masculine, familiarwonderfulvoice. I looked around Kirk’s slim shoulders and sagged in relief.

Peter.

Not dead.

Alive.

Vibrant and alive and…different.

He stepped out of the smoky, raining gloom. Back in his rightful place as shepherd of the jewels, his fingers wrapped tightly around a sword from the armoury. His linen trousers singed in places and blackened in others. Soot dabbled his chest while his handsome face no longer looked kind and protective but ruthless and vicious.

He reminds me of Henri.

Stepping toward us, he held the sword facing downward, but his chest flexed as if ready to swing. “Suri is dead, Kirk. And you will be too if you don’t let Ily go.”

A switch flicked in Kirk’s barely functioning stare. He blinked again and saw reality instead of nightmares. “Oh God. Oh fuck.” Ripping his hands off me, he reeled backward. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay—”

“I have to find her.” His face blanked again, and with a blood-curdling scream, he charged through the smoke and vanished deeper into the fortress.

Peter stepped close and touched my throat, making me jump. His power from before faded a little as his shoulders slouched. “You’re drenched in blood,jaanu.”

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