“Turn,” I order, forgetting that, in here, I am not a patrol leader.
Viola doesn’t argue. She gives me her back, mumbling a quick apology about how she should’ve asked if I was decent before knocking on the door.
I swallow a smile. “Arms out.”
Now she whirls, a scowl on her face. Her eyes drift from my bare chest to the harness I’m holding. “What is that?”
“This,” I say, motioning her to turn again, “will prevent Mara from ripping your body apart like last time.”
Her eyes widen, and I hold her gaze a moment longer than I should. “Okay.” She doesn’t protest and turns again. I thread her arms through the sleeveless harness, pulling on the strings like a corset. My fingers make quick work of the knots. Toward the end, I slip and brush against her bare skin.
She lets out a gasp, and my hand freezes. We’re both quiet, save for the low hum of her quickening breath. I can’t be this close to her. The bond is messing with my head again.
A few seconds later, I’m fastening the last of the knots, and she’s standing two steps away from me. I throw Lyria’s combat jacket, and Viola catches it against her chest.
“That thing nearly killed you, and now you’re offering yourself to her on a silver platter.” I lean against the doorframe, my arms crossed, watching her struggle with the zipper. “She won’t miss twice.”
“If I die”—she pauses, considering her next words—“promise me you’ll find the puppeteer.”
“You’ll find them yourself,” I mutter. She speaks of death so casually, as if she’s at peace with dying, as if she has nothing else to live for other than finding her sister’s killer. What happened to leaving Bale and starting anew?
“Take Raiku.” I hold out my hand.
Her gaze flicks to my aspier, then back to me.
“No,” she says, and Raiku hisses. I don’t know if he’s offended that she turned him down a second time, or that I suggested she take him in the first place.
“Let’s hope your wretched magic cooperates then.”
She scoffs. “You speak of my magic as if I don’t loathe every second I have to live with it. Magic ruined my life. The day it walked in was the day my sister walked out.”
How can she hate death magic more than me? Hatred aside, how can she be so blind to the raw power oozing off her? How can she hold on to a sister who took years of a life where she could’ve perfected her craft? It’s horrifying, the things Viola could do with it. Yet she chose to live in the shadow of a sister who pretended she didn’t exist.
“You’re allowed to hate your magic, but when it’s the only thing that can save your life, you don’t have a choice but to use it.” I close the door on her because I don’t trust myself around her. I don’t like how she makes me question something I’ve known my whole life. Mom was killed by a Mortemagi. Their magic of the dead feeds off their soul, chipping away years of their lives, leaving behind a shell of villainy. Once Viola tastes a drop of what her death magic can do, she will be drunk on the raw power.
Shaking away the thought, I pull a shirt from the nearby chair. OnceBeau and Victor get their bodies back, Viola needs to leave. Perhaps the distance will ease the bond’s drive to keep her safe.
When I walk out of my room, Viola is gone but Lyria is sitting by the fireplace, her eyes narrowing at Beau. She notices me and waves me over. “I’m still mad at you, but I don’t have a good feeling about Victor. He seemed almost too eager for Viola to resurrect him. Beau gave her a choice, but he didn’t even bother.”
“I don’t trust him either.” I sigh, dropping Dad’s reports in her lap. “But maybe it’s because we don’t know him well yet.”
Lyria scrunches her nose like she always does when she disagrees with something but doesn’t want to voice it out. Then her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, I went by Paltro’s office earlier, like you asked, but he was out. So I’ll try again tomorrow. Were the reports helpful at all?”
I nod. “Dad thought poachers were preparing for another Grimm.”
Beau and Lyria exchange a concerned look. “So much for old purist Ronin to think his bloodline wouldn’t betray him. Well,someonein his bloodline retrieved the cuff.” Lyria rolls her eyes. It’s ironic how Sileas Ronin insisted that Faro’s Cuff be kept in his personal vault, and surprising how easily he managed to convince the Mortemagi that they couldn’t possibly trust their kind to safeguard the cuff. As an act of goodwill, he even gave them the Imortalis to store in their catacombs.
“Did you know that Mom retrieved Raiek from the catacombs?”
“Yeah.” Lyria sighs. “Her last journal entry mentioned Raiek might have been a key piece to her lifedrain theory, but she—”
Lyria doesn’t need to continue. Mom never wrote another entry again, because she was ripped away from us by a Mortemagi.
“Are we really doing this?” Beau asks as he runs his hand through the coffee table. It’s odd seeing him here, even odder seeing him as a ghost. “How will we explain our resurrection to DOTS?”
“I doubt DOTS will suspect a brand-new Mortemagi.” Lyria shrugs. “Their arrogance won’t let them admit that a self-study could perform magic most Gorhail-trained Mortemagi cannot.”
“We can get around this, but I have a single condition.” Viola’s voice startles me. She’s walking up the spiral staircase, clad in Lyria’s combat jacket, which falls right above her thighs. The three dark red stripes on the left shoulder end right above our House crest—Viola wears it like it belongs to her.