Page 470 of Shadowblood Souls
Has this long discussion with Balthazar made them feel better or worse?
Griffin leans back in his chair, fully abandoning the game. His eyes take on a distant cast.
He can pick out their separate impressions because he knows them so well. That’s how he once helped the guardians track us all across the continent and beyond.
He will always know Riva from the inside out, in ways I never can. He hasn’t solidified the connection in our blood with her like I have, with the mark that hums on my breastbone with a faint but clear sense of her presence in the house, but he has a much more direct line to her heart.
It shouldn’t bother me anymore. It shouldn’t bother me that Balthazar sent her off with Drey and Zee when having my powers in the mix shouldalwaysmean she’s better protected.
So I’ll just pretend that it doesn’t. That’s gotten me pretty far already.
“Their agitation has become less intense, but it’s still there,” Griffin says after a moment. “The general uneasiness has spread to Andreas too. He and Zian are frustrated now—Riva’s closer to outright angry.”
Dominic is taking all this in as I do. His grimace lingers. “Whatever Balthazar is telling them, it’s not helping.”
I can’t restrain a snort. “When does it ever?”
But making that snarky comment doesn’t help anyone either. I stalk around the room that’s part living room with its hearth and upholstered chairs, part games room with the table and the collection of basic board games in a nearby cabinet. “If he’s nothelping, maybe he should let them go sotheycan tell us what’s going on.”
Of course, that would serve our purposes rather than the asshole’s. He only cares about what he wants.
If I knew exactly which of the rooms on the far side of the villa he’s lurking in—if I could barge right in there and wrench his neck around with my powers for that satisfyingsnapof his spine?—
My hands clench, and one of the cabinet doors flings open hard enough to smack into a neighboring side table.
With a waft of shame, I inhale slowly. Then I nudge the door back shut with the same power that yanked it open accidentally.
Griffin and Dominic don’t comment on my lapse, but it’s not as if they won’t have noticed. They’re just being polite about it.
I open my mouth, wanting to say something that’ll make me sound like I do havesomeself-control, but just then Toni appears in the doorway.
She takes us in with a flick of her cool gaze and jerks her head toward the hall. “Mr. Balthazar wants to see the three of you now.”
My pulse speeds up with a searing mix of relief and annoyance. We’re going to find out something, finally—but naturally the bastard made us wait a good long time before he could be bothered.
Toni escorts us down the hall to the drawing room. She steps back while we walk inside and closes the door behind us. I don’t know whether she stays outside to guard the doorway or goes off on some other business.
Apparently whatever business is going on in here, it doesn’t concern her.
In the past few days, the drawing room has become a lot less ominous. Not having the nearly dead specter of one of ourfriends lying there attached to unfamiliar hospital equipment will do that.
But today, it feels almost as unsettling as it used to. Even I can pick up on the tension lacing the air.
Riva glances over her shoulder at us from where she’s standing between Andreas and Zian in a semi-circle facing Balthazar’s screen. Her shoulders are raised, and the tendons show around her tightened jaw.
Zian is sporting an uneasy frown. Andreas holds on to some semblance of his usual easygoing posture, but his dark gray eyes have turned stormy.
It’s not just them in the room. To my surprise, Matteo has joined the discussion.
The scrawny, pinched-faced man who loves to poke and goad us stands off to the side between my friends and the screen, studying us new arrivals with an avid air I don’t like at all.
From the video transmission, Balthazar acknowledges our entrance with a smooth nod.Hedoesn’t look remotely out of sorts. He doesn’t look happy either, though.
The worst thing about the prick is that I can rarely tell how to read him. Even when he does let some emotion slip, it always seems a little off kilter with the situation.
I stride over to join my fellow shadowbloods, my muscles braced. “What’s going on?”
Balthazar draws in a breath as if to answer, but Riva beats him to it, her voice taut. “Our expanded powers—it’s getting harder for us to contain them. I hurt someone by accident while we were out there, and Zian damaged the office we were in.”
