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To take a thousand chances in a foreign land hoping to find the one angel who could push her through those doors, despite hating that she had to do so.
Clara turned on her heel before her knees gave out. The king barked something at her back, but she was still shaking too hard to make sense of the words.
Just as well. She didn’t think she should be called upon to decipher much at the moment, especially not the consequences of what she’d just done. Her mind was a jumble of sleep-deprived strength and dizzying amazement.
So it was an even bigger wonder when, as soon as she closed the door behind her, Bronze’s powerful arms wrapped around her and buffeted her fleeting strength with that of his own.
Chapter 15
The way Bronze saw it, he had, at best, another sixty seconds of patience left on his lit wick before that oak door to the receiving room lived out the rest of its life as wood pulp for toilet paper. And none of that double-ply shit. He wanted splinters.
Phrases like “let him fuck you” and “viper” echoed overloud in his already cramped mind. Funny thing about rage. No one ever talked about how thick and heavy the stuff actually was and how, once someone yanked on its rip cord, it inflated to such unimaginable limits that it forced every sensible thought to get the fuck out or get crushed beneath it.
Every single one of the king’s words that Bronze’s celestial senses picked up stoked the fire that had been carefully banked within him ever since he’d arrived in the keep. But as soon as he heard the horseshit about this Lord Raff keeping Clara in comfort, his composure snapped. He had no problem standing outside the door, playing the part of silent sentinel and getting the side-eye from the lycan guards while daddy and daughter duked it out. Who didn’t love a good stare-down? But for some reason, the idea of Clara not just engaging in contract negotiations but being an actual object of them made his sword hand twitchy.
A contract was an oath. He knew a bit more than most about that subject, but no fucking way would he stand by and listen to Clara being casually listed as a goddamn line item.
Bronze’s fury launched him at the door before the guards got it in their pea brains to look up from their navels. But instead of worn wood scratching against the inside of his forearms as he ripped the oak off its hinges, it was Clara’s soft form that brushed against his skin.
Soft and shaking.
“I . . . I think I need to sit down,” she mumbled against the wall of his chest, her tiny fists balling up his shirt. “Quickly.”
Well, fuck. No one had to tell him to do anything quickly. Ever. Especially not her, after hearing the battle of wills and tongues for which she’d just single-handedly led her own campaign.
Bronze tucked her into his side and hated how slight she felt, even if the warmth of her skin was still cool enough to knock his inferno of fury down by a couple of thousand degrees. Her shoulders were hunched so far forward, she was liable to topple over if he didn’t hold her upright.
“Lady,” one of the guards said, though the lycan kept one eye trained on the room still occupied by the king. A sharp crash resounded from behind the door, followed by the tinkling of glass on hardwood. Another impact, this one forceful and blunted. Furniture, Bronze suspected.
The guard’s worried eyes shifted between his allegiances. “Lady, do you need?—”
“She’s good,” Bronze cut the male off, picked a hallway, and propelled them away from whatever blast zone her father had left behind.
Because an asshole like that always left shit behind.
“Infirmary,” Clara whispered as her grip tightened on him. “Down the stairwell up ahead, then the last door on the right at the end of the hallway.”
“On it.”
Bronze ignored the heavy stares at his back as he guided them through the keep. He kept his eyes trained on the precision of his steps, not wanting to inadvertently trip her, but even traveling the short distance, his peripheral senses picked up on a whole lot of one of these things is not like the other.
As he made it to the bottom of the stairs and escorted them past the kitchen, he caught a glimpse of lycans in black slacks, some in matching black button-down chef’s coats and some in cotton aprons, toiling over pans above a stone hearth. The smoke from the fires vented up through the chimney above the stove, but even with the rudimentary ventilation, an abundance of smoke still filled the space, as if someone had forgotten to switch on the cooking range hoods. Through the smoke, he could just make out the tips of their knives, or at least, he thought he could. Were those black blades? Certainly not stainless steel or even patinated carbon steel. Nor were they the bone-white hue of the weapon worn by the first guard they encountered when they arrived at the keep.
“Here,” Clara said, pointing to the infirmary’s entrance. “Take the first room. I just need a few minutes.”
Bronze tucked them into a room that looked like a hospital’s private suite of sorts. While he closed the door behind them, Clara hobbled over to the bed and collapsed. She had yet to fully open her eyes and instead let her head settle between her legs while she breathed in the faintly sweet air in the room.
He hovered over her, unsure what to do or what to offer, because the only thing he had a mind to focus on was the calibrated arc he’d swing his halberd at to sever the king’s head at just the right spot so the male’s beard didn’t hang lower than the cumulative disappointments of his people.
“Matches are in the top drawer to your left,” she breathed.
Bronze stalled out where he stood. “Matches?”
“For the lights.”
Well, that certainly gave him pause. Though he gathered they were belowground, he couldn’t fathom why the wall sconces adorning the infirmary suite would be anything more than decorative. Generally speaking, fire of any kind was a big no-no in medical settings, much to the plight of many a smoker.
Wait . . .
