Page 18 of Trial of Three
Still on the floor, Coal’s tortured gaze lifts to Shade’s, who advances with predatory slowness.
Coal picks himself up from the stone. For a horrifying heartbeat, the certainty that the two will truly try to kill each other echoes like thunder through my bones. Then lightning strikes with a reality that’s more chilling still.
Instead of getting to his feet, Coal rises only as far as his knees. Shoulders spread, head down, hands locked in the small of his back.
Shade draws back a fist, taking aim at Coal’s jaw. My breath catches. Shade’s knuckles crack against Coal’s face, the kneeling male grunting from the blow but never taking his hands from behind him, not even as blood runs from his split lip onto the floor.
“Don’t you dare hit him again!” I call, though neither male gives any sign of having heard me.
Showing his teeth, Shade kicks Coal’s unprotected abdomen, doubling the male over.
When Shade pulls back for the next blow, I grit my teeth, wrap the sheet around me, and sprint to the door. My body screams, my muscles giving out just as I crack it open enough to break Coal’s soundproofing wards and bellow for River with all the breath I have left.
12
Lera
“What’s happened?” River demands, crouching with Autumn beside me in the hallway while Tye sprints past us into the room, catches Shade’s wrist mid-blow, and throws the male into the closest wall. I cringe at the sound of a body hitting stone and then again as the last of Coal’s drawers topples from the overturned dresser. River’s gray eyes narrow and his nostrils flare, the scents of injury and sex no doubt filling his nose like perfume. “We’ve a trial we can’t fail in less than a week’s time, and one of my quint members can barely stand up. I want to know whatexactlyhappened.”
“I’m hardly what Autumn would call intelligent,” Tye calls, standing his ground between the still-kneeling Coal and furiously panting Shade, “but it seems that Coal not only bedded Shade’s mate but had a really good time doing it.”
Coal growls. “I did not have a good time.”
“What?” I rise onto my elbow, my face hot.
Tye cuts his eyes down toward the male. “Please keep talking Coal. You’re making the rest of us look great in comparison.”
Shade rises, his bare chest heaving as he shows his teeth to both Tye and Coal then stalks to me. River holds his ground, but Shade’s golden eyes focus on mine to the exclusion of the world. He crouches beside me, black hair falling around his worried face, and my breath stills, my heart pounding against hurt ribs.
Shade’s earthy scent caresses me as his fingers touch my face, too gentle for the large warrior. A tingle touches my skin and I jerk back from the wolf shifter’s hand, a hiss escaping my lips.
Shade flinches. “I won’t hurt you, cub,” he whispers. “Not you. Not ever.”
“I know.” I swallow, longing to rest my aching head in the hollow of his shoulder, right between the bulging muscles of his arm and hard squares of his chest. I want to be in Shade’s arms. Want to be in all of their arms. But this isn’t the time. Putting on what I hope is a stern voice, despite the indignity of cowering on the floor dressed in nothing but a bedsheet, I gently push his hand away. “You are going to hurt yourself. I felt you reach for your magic.”
Shade’s jaw tightens and he reaches forward again, the strain of calling upon his power enough to make beads of sweat rise on his brow. “I will make my own decisions about my magic.”
I grab his wrist. “Like hell you will.”
“Welcome to my world,” River mutters darkly behind me.
I release Shade’s wrist, blinking at the commander. He looks as terrible as I feel, the weight he carries on his broad shoulders echoing in his eyes as he takes in the space around him. Shade, dark with fury over being denied killing himself. Coal, kneeling and bloody. Me, unable to sit up. Tye, standing in the middle of it all, struggling to grin over the concern clouding his face. Autumn, looking on with a tension that tells me Kora’s quint has yet to return.
River’s world. The one that he’s been desperately trying to keep from collapsing around our ears. Except... I raise my chin, meeting River’s eyes. “Not yours, River,” I say quietly. “Ours. I’m just as responsible for the quint as you are.”
“That’s—”
Autumn puts a hand on her brother’s arm to stop him. “Lera is a weaver,” she says softly. “There are some things only she can do.”
River says nothing, running his hands along my body in the way Coal did earlier. Checking for injuries and coming up with a list that turns his gray eyes dark. “Can you make it to the infirmary?” he asks with a detachment that promises a less pleasant conversation to come. “Or do we need to fetch a healer here?”
Shade growls. “No one is healing Lera but me.”
“Oh, be quiet, all of you,” Autumn huffs, striding past us into Coal’s room. Bracing her hands on the hips of her coral silk pants, she studies both the wreckage and the wrecked with an academic’s curious gaze. In the bright light of morning, I see it suddenly through her sharp eyes—a literal war zone. “When did this happen?” she asks finally, waving a slender hand between Coal and me.
“Last night,” Coal says. “Around two.”
“Two.” Hands back on her hips, Autumn turns to meet each of the males’ gazes in turn. “And which amongst you imagine that Coal actually injured a helpless female and then kept her locked up for five hours in his bedchamber?”
