His mouth hardened.
“That’s why I hit you, to knock you out of it.”
“I didn’t need to be knocked out of anything, and especially not by you.”
“Tell yourself whatever you want, but that doesn’t change that, yeah, ya did.”
When he stood, I did too. When that eerie moaning snaked through the cave once again, he spun in place, back and forth as far as the Rillis rope would allow, peering down a pair of tunnels that bifurcated away from us.
“You’ve already led us down both of those. We need to head back this way.” I pointed over my shoulder. “There may still be some tunnels or caves we haven’t gone through.”
“We have to find her. We have to help her.”
“Who … Carina?” It came out like a gentle touch, as if he and I were friends, when I should have wanted to flagellate him with the name to punish him for the loss of my brother. “Who is she?”
He reeled back as if I’d physically struck him. “No one. She’s … she’s no one.”
The pain so plainly tugging on his face indicated that Carina, whoever she was, meant everything to him.
“Don’t say her name ever again,” he snapped.
I opened my mouth to demand why I shouldn’t, but ended up closing it, giving my enemy a level of respect he didn’t deserve. I wound the rope around my forearm, tugging him closer.
“What makes you think this person whom you don’t want me to name is in these caves with us?”
In the lumoonlight, his face was usually warm, having been toasted by the sun. Now, it paled.
“She’s…” He shook his head. “She’s not. She can’t be,” he said, so softly it became one with the steady keening. “I was … confused.”
We locked eyes for several beats, during which my power pulsed futilely against my collar. Never before in my life had I gone so long without connecting to someone else’s blood. Not only was I usually able to manipulate the blood of others, but it also provided me with information about a person, ranging from what or whom they’d last eaten, to their level of strength or weakness, to sometimes knowing where they’d recently been. Not all blood provided me with the same data, and some resisted sharing anything at all. But my power normally managed to retrieve something useful for me.
I missed my power nearly as much as I missed Teo—or perhaps it was as much, so long as I wasn’t admitting it to anyone but myself. The loss of both had left an aching, empty void inside me.
“If she’s not in the caves, then why did you make us run all fucking over looking for her?” I hesitated. “Tell me who she is.”
His face whipped away from mine while he busied himself looking everywhere but at me. When the moaning surged again, a dirge of tragic lament, he brought his hands to his hips, pressing them to his weapons belt.
Shit! I should have swiped that fine-looking dagger with the etched hilt while he was down. What was I thinking? Or not thinking, more like, which was a problem.
“Whoever she is, we have to help her,” Baz said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a marauding, killer general? That’s not very maraudy.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a princess who’s secretly an assassin?”
My brows twitched before I halted all other reaction.
“Your face says I’m not supposed to know that.”
Dammit, how did I give it away? I was supposed to be sharper than this, so much sharper.
“I did my research while you were in the dungeon. You’d be amazed what kind of information I can get my hands on when I’m well motivated.”
“Big fail, then. But hey, at least you got the princess part right.”
“Uh-huh.” He smirked—he fucking smirked at me!
“Shut up.”