Raven watched Blade’s face as he sifted through what she had told him.
His dark-eyed expression gave nothing away, although his jumbled emotions, including the thread of a fast-suppressed fear, were what she would expect given such a conclusion.
“So demons can summon you,” he said.
“No. I said they tried,” she corrected him, though she did not know if that remained true now that her father knew of her existence. She had given him something. Some hold over her. She did not know what it might be.
“Then they must believe it’s a possibility.” He spoke to himself, as if puzzling out the logic. “Why wouldn’t it be possible? Back in Freetown I saw a priestess summon demons. Why couldn’t demons summon spawn?”
Grease from the roasting birds dripped into the hungry flames. The severe lines of his face softened and blurred in a blaze of light, like the smudgings made by a charcoal pencil on vellum when rubbed by an artist’s thumb.
Raven drew up her knees beneath the blanket and rested her chin on her kneecaps. She hugged her shins as she stared into the fire. “I didn’t escape from one form of servitude to have it replaced by another. I won’t be summoned.”
Blade balanced on his heels, his forearms braced against the tops of his thighs, and relaxed his strong hands between them. Always, she noted, he kept his hands unimpeded.
“You haven’t escaped anything yet,” he said. “If you’d killed your stepfather—who is one of the goddesses’ chosen—and then had gone into the Godseeker Mountains, their assassins would have had no choice but to kill you, too. Your friend Creed couldn’t have saved you. He probably can’t, even now.” Blade’s gaze remained steady, forthright. “Becoming one of their assassins changes a man, Raven. They’re killers, nothing more. I think you’re placing too much faith in your friend.”
“You’re an assassin,” Raven countered. She saw by the tightening of the fine lines around his lips that her assumption was correct. “Yet you stopped me from killing Justice even though you didn’t know me. You stayed with me and cared for me for three days. You fought demons with me.” You made love to me because I asked it of you, even though it was not what you wanted. “That makes you more than a killer.”
“I received the Godseekers’ training because I needed it, but I never became one of them. When it was obvious to them that I wouldn’t be what they wanted, they plotted to kill me.”
“Yet you survived.”
“It wasn’t easy. And the first chance I got, I attempted to cross the desert alone—through demon territory—to escape them completely.”
He had said attempted, not succeeded.
Raven had heard the stories of what demons did to the mortals they captured. She wondered if this was why Blade feared them so much. How had he managed to survive?
She did not ask. She, too, had things too difficult to discuss.
“Creed is more than a killer, too,” she said. “He’d never harm me or let anyone else do so.”
“I know you believe that.” Blade adjusted the quail skewers and added more kindling to the fire. “But I assure you, the training will change him. Going to him will be taking too much of a risk if you truly want to survive.” He looked up from his task. Deep brown eyes met hers. “Two nights ago, three Godseekers passed not far from here on their way into the mountains. One of them was your stepfather. Either he suspects that’s where you’ll head, or he plans to use the assassins against you. Probably both. He’s placed a bounty on you, you know. I found that out when I went back to Goldrush for supplies.” Sympathy crept into his eyes. “He’s offered to pay more if you’re brought to him alive.”
She would never go back. But Justice was two days ahead of her, and he knew the way to the temple. He would get to it first. Except… Blade knew how to get there, too. On foot, they could travel through shortcuts that a hross could not possibly navigate. There still might be time.
She would not give up hope. “Creed would never refuse to help me,” she said. “All I need to do is get to him. Would you guide me?”
He did not answer right away.
“I didn’t keep you alive for three days only to help you commit suicide,” Blade finally said. “I’d be willing to find a place for you to hide where you’ll be safe, but I won’t lead you to the temple. There are a number of small, isolated communities in the mountains.” A muscle contracted in his jaw. Other than that, he did not move as he continued to watch her. “But first, you’d have to guarantee me that demons won’t be able to harm the mortal world through you if I do.”
More than the raw, pine-scented wind chilled her now. She understood his silent message. He would not hesitate to do what he believed necessary in order to keep demons away from this world. That put her life in peril—she could give him no such guarantee.
She contemplated her stupidity. She was the one who had placed too much meaning on their lovemaking, not he. He owed her nothing, while she owed him far more than she could hope to repay. It would be best if she were done with him now and went her own way. She’d have to find Creed herself. Even if she could not join the assassins, he would find a way to help her.
Before the words had time to form on her lips, however, Blade twisted on his heels. His hand flashed to his hip.
“Whoever, you are, show yourself,” he commanded the shadows.
A thicket of rabbitbrush rustled as the blond boy who had sat with her during Blade’s absence crawled out from hiding. He was even dirtier and thinner than she recalled, and Raven’s breath caught at the sight of him. He faced Blade bravely, something she doubted many full-grown, healthy men could have done.
He lifted his chin a bit higher, looking Blade in the eye. “Demons aren’t what threaten this world.”
…
Instinct alone stayed Blade’s hand, and he did not remove it from the hilt of the knife at his hip. This half-starved boy did not realize how close he had come to death. Blade had no idea how he had gotten so close, only that it had not been by natural means. He narrowed his eyes at the implications of that.
“You’re spawn,” he said.
The boy stiffened, insulted. “My name is Roam.”
Roam’s attention shifted to Raven, with her untidy curls and bared legs. The interest in his eyes warned Blade he was too close to manhood to be trusted around her.
Frustration left Blade ill-tempered and dangerous. Rationale and past experience said that the demon in Raven could not be trusted either, but male instinct drove him to protect her, counteracting his usual common sense. He felt no such indecisiveness toward this boy or the demon blood in him. While Blade did not want to kill him in front of Raven, he would if given a reason.
A single step in her direction would be reason enough.
“You’re feeling better?” Roam was asking, the question directed at Raven.
She nodded, tugging the blanket tighter as if uncomfortable with the raw male scrutiny. It did not concern Blade as much as the discovery that Roam seemed to know of her recent illness. He remembered her asking him a question about a boy. At the time he had thought it part of a hallucination.
“Do you know him?” Blade asked her.
Her eyes, so bright they sparkled even in the gloom of approaching nightfall, fixed on him. “He stayed with me that first day, while you were gone.”
She had not intended any criticism, he knew. She understood he’d had no choice but to tie her. Still, an unpleasant knot formed in his chest. He had known that any number of things could have happened to her while he was gone and judged it worth the risk. Fortunately, nothing had. But the fact that Roam had managed to find her meant the danger had been greater than he’d suspected, and that did not sit well.