Page 34 of A Blade of Lies and Spirits

Still, I needed to be sure my child wouldn’t kill Robert and Elise. For his own good more than theirs. “Dmitri, promise me you won’t call the lightning unless someone hurts you. Otherwise you could hurt Poppy or your other mother.”

“Mm?” He opened a sleepy eye.

“Promise me.” If he did so, it would be a promise laced with magic. One that would keep him from lashing out at them when he got mad. At least for a time.

He sighed. “‘Mitri no hurt Poppy or Muffer.”

Intent is everything in magic, and the binding, simple and strong, settled on him. For it to be that strong, he needed to care for them. My mouth twisted with the desire to spit. I choked the impulse back.

I cuddled Dmitri as the rain poured down, and the wind lashed at us. Drops ran down my face and I tasted salt mixed with rainwater.

Chance lowered the ward. Elise bolted for my side, her fingers hovering over Dmitri. I glared at her. I couldn’t muster any real heat, and luckily for her, she ignored it.

“Will he be ok?” she murmured, her voice pinched to a thread.

I nodded.

“What did you do?” Robert’s power mantled him in a blur. I wondered what he planned to do with it.

“Nothing,” I answered, my voice flatter than the flagstones.

His arms folded, he stood behind Elise, looking down his hooked nose.

“Alys. The storm. How can Dmitri do this? Nothing human…” Robert’s voice rang hard and cold as the crack of doom. “Did you sleep with anelf?”

Sweet malice bubbled into the smile I sent beaming to him through the rain.

Walker winced as I breathed in to answer.

A concussion of air from the building threw us back. I tucked myself around Dmitri, who wailed in surprise and fear. I grunted as my back hit a decorative tree, stopping our skid across the ground. Dmitri whimpered as fire bloomed within the house.

“What was that?” shouted Robert. He’d been thrown further than us, through the still burning fort.

“Incoming!” Walker’s deep voice echoed over Robert’s. He moved, graceful and fast, toward the dining area, indigo magic gathering on his hands. A shield expanded from it, draping like gauze across the French doors and windows leading from the house to the garden.

Elise crawled over by me, one arm held at an awkward angle. I passed Dmitri to her on her good side.

“Get down! Your security was soft, so I wired explosives into ingress points. One of them just went off. We’ve got hostiles, so we need to get out of here!” I shouted it once he was in her arms, and I’d placed some distance between us. I didn’t want to frighten him more by being too close and yelling.

“The hell?” I’d laugh another day at Robert’s incredulity.

“What’s going on?” I winced at the shrillness in Kara’s voice. She crouched by Chance near the bedroom exit, bleeding from cuts caused by bits of glass that had flown everywhere.

If Chance was oozing his way into Capitol society, he could damn well protect them while I dealt with the fight. My priority was defending Dmitri.

Chance’s expression shifted into incredulity as he ran across the open area of the garden, dragging Kara with him. He continued a step past us, leaving Kara by me and placing himself between us and the door. His hands flexed, preparing to throw another shield up. He settled close enough to me that I smelled the mix of his musky cologne and the exertion of sweat from the magic he’d already spent.

The distinctive hiss of laser guns zapped in the next room, peppering Walker’s shield. He surveyed it, then strode back to the knot of us.

“That will hold, depending on whether they have mages in both groups. It’s a pincer maneuver, I believe.”

Shapes, slightly blurred by the shield, moved through Dmitri’s room and into the dining area. The low light gleamed on the dulled metal of their weapons, with glowing indicators strung on their sides like jewelry. They hadn’t bothered to mute the lights, so they wanted us aware and frightened of their weaponry.

I yanked Kara down as she tried to run for the hedge exit.

“Stay down!” I growled and shoved her in her father’s direction. He knelt, a working I wasn’t familiar with readied in his hands as she stumbled past him. I hoped it was effective.

Suddenly, from beside the hedge, a flare of fire bowled through a row of decorative bushes. An armored man ducked around the corner, a working leaving his hands as he appeared. It splattered on Chance’s shield. At least twenty mercenaries arrayed here, in full armor with cutting-edge weaponry. Magic and tech.

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