Page 69 of This Monster of Mine

Kadra’s humor faded, his eyes returning to knifelike sharpness. He surveyed her boots. “I’ll have a pair made.”

The words held no condescension, but she still bristled. “Thank you, but I can afford it.”

“Hmm.” Not a change in his expression, but she had the feeling that he’d seen too much in her response.

She hated this. The attraction, the fear, the contradictory directions her body and mind fled in around him. The way she watched for the wry curve of his mouth and how she’d replayed the night he’d removed her birrus a thousand times. A bolt of lightning hissed above, and she wished it would strike her, so she would stop thinking. An angry roar of thunder followed, and she couldn’t halt a shudder.

Kadra looked down, raising an eyebrow, and she flushed.

“We’re under atree,” she said through gritted teeth. It may as well be a lightning rod.

Looking like he was fighting a laugh, he raised a hand. Tension thrummed through him. Her eyes widened when a shimmering lattice unfolded beyond the tree’s cover, curving high around them to form a dome. It hovered above the ground, sparking and hissing when rain struck it. Not one drop made it through.

“I didn’t think lightning could be used this way,” she breathed.

“Every element can.” Kadra dropped his hand, and the shield vanished, rain returning to pile on them. The rigid line of his shoulders eased. “I’d keep it up, but I need to see if a bolt gets too close. After all, we are under atree.”

If he wasn’t all that was keeping her standing, she’d have throttled him. She settled for a scowl, painfully conscious of his arm around her waist. The man who might have destroyed her body, holding it. The gods must be cackling.

“Take tomorrow to rest,” he murmured.

She looked up at him. “Why? I’m well.”

He directed a meaningful glance at her hands, which seemed to be performing an interpretive dance.

She clenched them into fists. “It happens.”

“When you’re overworked.”

How often had he been staring at her hands to figure that out? “I don’t shirk my duties.”

“In which case, you should take tomorrow to go over next week’s petitions. The Hall of Records will have them.”

For a second, she thought she’d been struck by lightning.The Hall of Records.Her records of the Fall. Her answers would arrive tomorrow. She waited for elation, but the deep-seated ache she’d battled hours earlier resurfaced. She hated that she knew why.Kadra, will I find your name in those records?

“Very well,” she muttered.

A dull hum suddenly filled the air, throbbing in an eerie rhythm. Kadra’s arm around her turned to steel.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered and raised a hand, sparks flying at his fingertips.

She’d barely complied when blinding light flashed beyond her shut eyelids. Kadra’s hand moved from her waist to the back of her head, pressing her into his chest. A terrifying snap of sound followed. The mud beneath their feet trembled in response. She snuck a glance in time to witness the lightning bolt that had tried to strike them fly back up to the sky and crack it open, branching into a thousand filaments.

Dropping his hand, Kadra exhaled heavily.Kadra’s a talented magus, Cisuré had said. But this was beyond talent.What monstrous power.

A tinny noise started, similar in vibration to the buzz they’d just heard.Another bolt. But farther away, she realized, eyeing the blurred shape of a thick oak in the distance. She stiffened in preparation for the tree to go up in flames when Kadra’s hand rose again. Lightning arrowed down, ready to claim its victim when it warped and fled upstream to strike the clouds.

Another low breath left him. His sleeve fell back, the runes on his armilla blazing in the rain. Red had entered a few, and she realized that he must have drained himself controlling the first storm, before they’d goneto see Livia’s mother, and was doing so again. How he wasn’t comatose was beyond her.

As she stared, the hand gripping the back of her head returned to her waist. She withdrew, pretending she hadn’t just been face-first in his chest.

“You’re safe.” His hand found the taut line of her spine and settled there. “That’ll be it for some time.”

Safe. The simple word struck her with the weight of a sledgehammer. Conflicted, she stared at him.When have I ever been safe?

In the downpour, Kadra’s features looked crueller than ever, watchful gaze trained on the sky.Magnificent.The realization clenched around her heart like a fist. If she were a bolder woman, she’d have risen on her toes, pressed her mouth to his and lost herself entirely.

But she wasn’t. She was a Petitor out of her depth, under an illusion. Her face, her reasons for being near him, none of them were real.

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