If looks could kill! Someday somebody’s gonna look at somebody about me like that. I’m not about to tell him I’m pretty sure Ro was gonna let her die. “No. She’s okay.” I clarify a little. “Well, I mean, as okay as she was when she got here.”
He gives me a look and says, “Where?” again.
A cold, hard fact just got driven home for me with the doused torches and painted-over wards. I can’t keep Mac safe by myself. Even I have to sleep sometimes. With the exception of All Hallows’ Eve, Barrons has kept her safe.
Still … there’s no way anything human plucked me out of the air like that. What is he? I don’t know how much Mac trusts him. “Promise me you won’t harm Ro,” I say. “We need her.”
Something savage moves deep in his eyes. “I’ll decide that when I see Mac.”
I feel savage all the sudden, too. “Well, where the feck were you when she needed you?” I snarl. “I was there.”
Without another word, I freeze-frame out.
Only two things I trust in these walls: me, and my sword. If my instincts are spot on—as they always are—Barrons isn’t the only thing headed Mac’s way right now.
I’m gonna beat ‘em all there.
I let that old, cold sidhe-seer place in my head swallow me. I become power, strength, speed, free!
The door to Ro’s office splinters.
The sword is mine.
Then I’m in Mac’s cell, standing over her. She rolls over like she senses the heat of my body. Clings to my leg. Rubs against me. Makes noises. I pretend nothing’s weird. She can’t help herself right now. I don’t look straight at her. I haven’t since I got her out. I don’t know a lot about sex, but I do know what’s happening to her is no way to learn it. I been doing a little research. It’s got me worried. There’s not a single case of a person turned Pri-ya coming back from it. Not one. They’re mindless animals that do whatever they’re told until they die. And those were the cases of people turned by Seelie. Never been anyone turned by Unseelie, and Mac got the whammy from three of the most powerful! But Mac’s got wicked balls. She’ll claw her way back somehow. She has to. We need her.