She took a step toward the rack of daggers.
He cleared his throat. “But maybe you’d want something bigger.”
She looked back with a lifted eyebrow. “You just said—”
“Liam and Archer are prime, unbroken talyan.” Heat rose in his face from the lump of charred coal in his chest that had once been his pride. “Their mates can afford to skimp on personal protection.”
“And I have you.”
“You have half a talya mate.”
She scowled. “Three-quarters, at least.”
“So you need to replace that missing quarter.”
“Why don’t you?”
The embarrassed heat evaporated, leaving him as chilled as that night when he’d lain pinned in the wreckage of battle with a guillotine of glass poised above his outstretched arm. “I’ve told you the teshuva can’t regenerate what’s gone.”
“They don’t see fit to give us claws or fangs to fight the ferales either, so we have these.” She swept a hand toward the assorted armaments.
This was her payback for making her ask to stay with him. “Perhaps you didn’t notice, but I’m missing a hand.”
She cast her gaze down the row of weapons. “Aren’t at least a few of these intended for one-handed use?”
He gritted his teeth. “You think I haven’t considered that? My balance with the teshuva is shot. I am not that warrior anymore.”
She walked away from him.
The abrupt separation almost staggered him.
It was worse than when he’d lost touch with the demon when he lost his hand.
She reached for an elaborate, triple-curved blade. “I saw one of these in a painting next to the mask I found for Mobi. It’s African, isn’t it?” She unhooked it from the wall and gave it an experimental whirl so the three open arcs of steel sang in harmonious descant.
“Be care—” He bit back the rest of the inadvertent exclamation. She wouldn’t be careful. Being careful wasn’t in her DNA, or in the etheric mutations the teshuva had given her. But the demon always had a feel for a good blade.
“I like it,” she said.
Of course she would. “The design is based on a Congolese executioner’s sword.”
She took a long step back and extended the armlength blade. Shaped like three linked sickles, the sword’s upper arc came to a point and was sharpened on both sides. The two lower arcs were smaller and sharpened only along the inner edge. She tilted it under the light. “It’s beautiful.”
Etched lines and indents reflected back the light in baubles that danced along her skin. “Looks good on you.”
Abruptly, she reversed her grip. Her fingers pressed precariously around the honed edges, to hand him the blade. “Obviously meant for you.”
Dull heat spread through his chest. “Without the demon’s balance—”
“I didn’t have any teshuva protection when I learned to do a backward walkover pole straddle with no panties.”
He choked.
“I mean,” she said patiently, “you don’t give up just because you can’t rely on the demon anymore. If I’d given up every time I was on my own . . .” She shook her head, the blade still held out to him, unwavering. Her stare was equally steady.
He reached out to take the hilt and eased the sharp edges away from her fingers.
With all the elaborate curves, the weight of the weapon seemed to drift, first balancing near his grip, then sidling away, mocking him. Within him, the teshuva shifted with the same restlessness.
She watched him. “So you used that to lop off the heads of marauding cannibal tribes?”
Absently, he frowned. “I’ve never held one before. I wielded Bible verses in those days.”
“What did you use after you joined the league, before your accident?”
In his mind’s eye, the guillotine of glass hung above him. He forced away the memory and angled up to the balls of his feet to steady himself, but his palm was slick with sweat. When he tightened his fingers, the strain made his grip even more precarious.
The blade wavered when he pointed across the room. “Like that. A two-handed, double-edged greatsword.”
Nim pulled her lips to one side in contemplation. “I see why. It’s very straight.” Her gaze slid slyly to him. “And big and long too.” She shrugged. “Still, I like the one you’ve got there now. It’s kind of . . . kinky.”
He almost laughed. In despair at her folly, but still. “You won’t let this go, will you?”
“We’re bonded, right? That seems to cancel out letting go.”
The sword weighed down his left, nondominant arm. The demon energy surged through his bones . . . and buckled to a halt in his missing extremity, just as it always did. His muscles cramped with the urge to toss the blade from one hand to the other.
Which, of course, he couldn’t. Bile burned in his throat. Bad enough to have struggled with tooth brushing. What she was asking now . . .
No. She had put her faith in him when he had taken everything else. The least he could do was have some in himself.
He took another step back and stretched, trying to resettle the demon’s energy. “This isn’t . . .”
Nim stepped into his space, her aura sparking along his skin. She set herself against his back, her breasts soft against his shoulder blades, her hands skimming down his arms to settle at his wrist and stump.
“What if . . .” she mused. The fingers of her left hand brushed the hilt nestled in his palm. “What if the sword was your hand? Like the cup of the spearhead wraps the shaft.” She pressed her arms together and transferred the sword from his left hand to her right.
He shifted, unbalanced. She counterweighted, and he settled into his dominant stance. It felt good. She felt good.
“You wouldn’t need me as your right hand if you had this,” she said.
His pulse thumped with anticipation. “Liam was a blacksmith. He could adapt the haft.”
“And we already have the pattern of the prosthetic arm in your room.”
“Going through my goods?”
“Naturally,” she said.
“Freaked you out, did it?”
“Like you would not believe.”
He took a deep breath, indulging in the caress of her flesh. “I thought I was arming you.”
She slid around to face him. The blade whispered against his thigh as she dropped it to her side. “Disarming me, you mean.”
“If that’s what you want.” He eased the sword from her hand and backed her to the wall, where he hung the blade on its hook.
The guilt of making love in the league’s weapons room while the rest of the talyan fought for their lives out in the dark city or alone with their wounds might once have given him pause, but Nim of the nimble fingers didn’t allow for any pauses. Or guilt.
Still reeling from the possibility of regaining his sword arm—quite literally—he thrilled at the sensation of her, taut under his weight as he pressed her against the wall.
She gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes. “All this time, why did you settle for that silly hook?”
“I was waiting for you.”
She lifted her chin. “Don’t tease me, missionary man.”
He thumped his truncated forearm against the wall beside her head and leaned in to her. One of the small knives jumped off its hook. “I haven’t been down here since I was wounded.”
She pushed herself up on her toes. “But you like it so much.” Her voice was a low growl in his ear as her tongue traced his lobe.
He gasped and spoke the truth. “I didn’t think the other talyan would fight with me broken.”
“I’ll fight with you.” She moved down to graze her teeth along his jaw.
Was that a threat or a promise? His head spinning with desire, he hardly cared. Or maybe his head was spinning because she was rolling him across the wall. His shoulder knocked down a scimitar. The glinting blade narrowly missed his foot.