Chapter 15 · The Antidote's Price

"Where's the antidote?" I drove my knife beneath Rafe's jaw before the blood on the floor had stopped running.

His hand closed around my wrist.

Not hard enough to break it. Hard enough to remind me he could.

"You heard Lucian," Rafe said. His voice came out low and rough, scraped thin by pain. "The copy burned. The real letter's still on me."

"Then strip."

His eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second.

"You're enjoying this too much."

"Your soldiers are staring. Give them a better show."

The guards had backed toward the iron doors. None of them looked at Soren's eye, still rolling inside Lucian's blood-slick leather pouch. None of them looked at me.

They looked at Rafe.

That was the problem.

The commander had one hand around my wrist and the other clamped over his ribs. Silver poison blackened the veins beneath his skin. Every breath scraped through him.

The blood bond dragged his pain through my bones in hot, ugly waves.

I pushed the blade closer.

"Tell me where the letter is, or I'll open you up and search."

"You already searched me."

"I stabbed a guard. I didn't search you.