“He said he needed the rest.” Hargrove smiled, and it was vicious. “You’ll be taking over his trainees as soon as you recover.”
Cyrus limped in a few moments later, while I was still reeling from the shock. He’d brought flowers, which I took as a good sign. He usually forgets stuff like that, although oil changes on my Harley are done like clockwork.
“So I guess I’m forgiven?” I asked, as he leaned over for a kiss.
“It will be at least a week until that happens. This is merely an injury-related time-out in my being pissed off at you.” He settled himself gingerly in a chair, his own injured leg stretched out in front of him.
“Come to think of it,” I told him, “I don’t know what I have to apologize for.”
“How about knocking me unconscious? Again?”
“I didn’t have a lot of time for a discussion.”
“And to think I used to dislike arguing with my girlfriends. Of course, that was before I encountered your method of ending a conversation.”
I sighed. “Fine. No more numb sticks.” Caleb had taken mine anyway.
“And as long as we’re on the subject, what about taking on Grayshadow on your own and almost giving me a stroke?” Cyrus’s words were light, but his expression was anything but.
“To be fair, you didn’t know about that until later.”
“I had a front-row seat courtesy of our bond. And without knowing you planned to sic his own wards on him!”
“About that bond thing—”
Cyrus shook his head. “That’s not going to work. For once, we’re going to finish one argument before we start the next.”
“Fine,” I said, giving him a look. “Although it should be pretty obvious that I couldn’t tell anyone my plans. Not even Sebastian. You know what wolf ears are, and Grayshadow was right there! He might have overheard.”
“And if he hadn’t used the wards?” Cyrus demanded. “If he’d assumed he could beat you on his own? What then?”
“He didn’t know my tat had run out of juice,” I pointed out. “And it had already hurt him once. He had no way of knowing that wouldn’t happen again.”
“And you had no way of knowing if that would be enough to convince him! Or that you’d guessed right about what his wards would do. They could have fought with him!”
“I took a calculated risk.”
“Based on what?”
“Jamie’s knowledge of the maker, for one thing. Some of the surviving gang members were rounded up and questioned last night. They’d been trading Wilkinson Fey wine now and again in return for protection wards, so they thought nothing of taking him the wolf pelts. He initially refused to have anything to do with them, but after they knocked him around a little, he agreed to give them what they wanted: weapons. What they didn’t know was that he’d ensured that those weapons would only work against them.”
“But if the interrogation was last night, you didn’t know any of that when you challenged!”
“No, but I knew that a guy who’d had his only child killed by a gang wasn’t likely to bow to pressure from another one. And he had to know he’d be killed as soon as he did what they wanted. He’d seen the wolf pelts and therefore was in a position to identify the ones who had taken them. It was the same reason his daughter was killed six years ago. So if he was going to die anyway, I thought there was a good chance he’d like to take a few of the gang with him.”
“A good chance?” Cyrus looked like he was swallowing something sour. “If you’d been wrong you’d be dead!”
“If it had to be me or Sebastian, better that it was me,” I told him, struggling for calm. Arguing with Cyrus was usually fun, adding frisson to whatever we were doing. But not when he got on this subject.
“Sebastian knew the risks when he assumed his position—”
“As did I. I’m a war mage trained to do exactly this kind of thing.”
“I think if other mages went around fighting duels to the death in front of the Council, I might have heard.”
“Maybe not in front of the Council,” I agreed, “but just about everywhere else. And with the war on, it’s likely to happen again. Particularly with my new job.”
Cyrus looked up from glaring at the rug. “What new job?”
“Hargrove has stuck me with the worst group of trainees you’ve ever seen. They scare me. I may be in here for a while, considering I have zero incentive to get well.”
“You love teaching.”
“They blew up the gym, Cyrus! Within a day of arrival! And I’m supposed to have them combat ready in six months!”
“Sounds like they already are.” He looked much cheerier suddenly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, in the Corps, teaching was considered one of the more dangerous activities. “But at least you weren’t fired. By the way, why weren’t you fired?”
“The same reason Caleb and Jamie weren’t. Hargrove prefers to keep us around to torture.”
He grinned. “I thought Sedgewick was the problem.”
“He was, until he decided to autopsy a certain off-limits corpse. Caleb dropped by with the news a few minutes ago. Sebastian noticed the difference when the body was delivered and made it sound like it was going to cause a major diplomatic incident. In reality we don’t even know for certain who the Were was.”
“That’s a politician for you.”
“So we did a trade. My little lapse for Sedgewick’s.”
“Sounds like things are looking up.”
“Yeah. So about that bond—”
“I have some news, too,” Cyrus said quickly. “I’ve talked Sebastian into putting together a group of vargulfs to act as informants and to keep an eye on the Were gangs that remain in Tartarus. Grayshadow was able to turn them because there’s almost no way for outcasts to redeem themselves. If they end up being of service during the war, he’ll get them clan status after the dust settles. It’ll be a low-ranked clan, but it’s a start.”
“What about you? He could tell Arnou that you caught the Hunter. Allow you to redeem yourself and rejoin the Clan.”
“And then who would coordinate the vargulfs? A Clan wolf can’t be seen talking to them, nor would they be likely to take orders from one.”
“But you could go home, Cyrus.”
He leaned over to kiss my neck. “I already am.”
I smiled back and slipped a lasso around his shoulders. “So, about that bond—”
He tried to pull back, and found he couldn’t. He started to look a little panicked.
“Lia—”
“Don’t even try it. You’ve been yelling at me for the last twenty minutes—”
“That wasn’t yelling.”
“Berating, then. So it’s my turn. How come Sebastian knew we were bonded and I didn’t?”
Cyrus closed his eyes and sighed. “You were so insistent that you weren’t Were. It was almost the first thing you ever said to me. I didn’t think it could happen. You’re only half-Were and there were none of the usual signs—until you left. I almost went crazy the first week; it was worse than leaving Arnou, ten times worse. And when I realized why…” His eyes opened, and there was genuine pain in them. “How could I tell you? I’m vargulf. I have nothing to offer you.”
“You have you.”
He gave a short, unamused laugh. “Yes, and I’m such a prize. You had to rescue me.”
“You were the one who found out what was going on,” I pointed out. “If you hadn’t told me, I never would have figured it out in time. And as I recall, you’d already freed yourself by the time I got there.”
“Lia,” he paused, searching for words as Cyrus never did. “This isn’t wounded male pride talking. You could have died yesterday; you almost did die. And I could do nothing to save you.”
His eyes looked haunted, and it wasn’t hard to guess that he was thinking about the other woman he’d failed to save. Sebastian had said they’d only been children when their mother was killed, but I knew Cyrus well enough to know he blamed himself for it. “You’re right,” I agreed, and his head shot up. “You couldn’t have done anything. Grayshadow was both a Were and a mage, albeit an untrained one. Only someone who was also both could have beaten him.”