Page 9

His brows drew together, thinning the circles of gold in his eyes. “You can call me Wren,” he told me after a moment. “You?”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to ask questions.” I scowled at the beasts he had slaughtered, slumped over one another at his feet. The reek had miraculously disappeared as if it was coming from their consciousness rather than their bodies.

“No, please,” Wren scoffed, all traces of camaraderie lost. “By all means, Auralie, tell me again how thankful you are for mesaving your life.”

I didn’t know what it was—that he had asked when he already knew or that he knew my full name without ever having heard it—but something about his tone set my spine straightening, and so I glared at him before turning my eyes towards Jonah’s body.

He didn’t look good. He didn’t look…

I’d seen lifeless bodies before, though never with a fatal spinal injury or any other kind of twisted extremity, and my heart started to sink.

Wren followed my downcast gaze, but I couldn’t read his expression in the shadows.

“My life?” I repeated, quietly but not weakly. “What abouthim? What did that thingdoto him?”

Wren’s wide eyes floated back and forth between us a few times before he spoke. “Do I look like a neurosurgeon?” he asked.

Did he—

I groaned, spinning away from him. I had too many things to do that were far more important than coddling a beautiful man’s fragile ego.

John was standing by the window, surveying the empty street. Tears pricked at the inner corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away.

Focus. Stay calm. Breathe.

“I need to call an ambulance and someone to take you home,” I stated, my throat suddenly hot and thick. I took a careful step towards my boss.

He bristled. “Nae,” he snapped. “Dinnae make any calls. There’s still one monster out there, and the Oracle knows how many more to come. Ye need to go, Aura. Ye need to go.”

Shaking my head at him again, I fought against the urge to turn to Wren for support. I still had no idea how the two of them had ended up in the bookstore together, or how those things evenexisted.

“I told you before that I’d prefer not to have to take her with me, old man.” Wren strode past me without so much as a glance. “You get her out of here, and I’ll deal with the caenim and the portal.”

John retreated from the window, his dark eyes narrowing into slits. “Yer certain then?”

“Yes.”

“Aye.” A frantic glance towards me. He began wringing his hands and nodded. “Get on with it, then.”

Wren pivoted in slow motion, eyes glowing like the core of the sun. He moved towards me, each of his steps silent against the hardwood floor despite his size. It was not just the bodies behind me that stopped me from withdrawing as he approached, but that feeling from earlier, that smell of warmth and comfort.

“Here,” he said, in the gentlest tone I’d heard him use yet. He took a small leather pouch from his pocket and pulled open the drawstring to reveal a clump of sparkling silver powder within. He frowned slightly, gazing down at me in earnest. “I’ve got you.”

I blinked back at him, confused by the sudden change in his voice and attitude—right up until he hurled a pinch of powder straight into the middle of my face.

It had a sickeningly sweet odour and tickled my nose like pollen, gathering at the back of my throat as I coughed and spluttered to dispel the amount I’d already inhaled. Swinging my hand out wildly, I knocked it from his grip, sending the pouch careening to the floor in a puff of silver dust.

Wren let it fall.

He stared at me, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“What”—I gasped, bracing a hand against the wall—“iswrongwith you?”

His irises burned down into a subtle copper glow as he gazed at me in wonderment, and then he reached out to brush his fingertips across my upper lip.

I jerked away from him at first, but Wren’s touch was magic. The moment his skin came into contact with mine, I felt his warmth all over my body, all the way down to the very centreof my being. It was new and old at the same time, like tasting a brand-new flavour of the only food you’d ever eaten in your whole entire life.

His fingers came away covered in silver powder, but the feeling—the connection—still lingered between us.