He blinked, studying her as if she’d grown a second head. “Split up?”
“You know, you go one way and I go another.” She waved her hand. “It’s a fairly simple concept.”
“I understand the concept,” he growled, “I just don’t understand why you would be so idiotic as to suggest it. You wouldn’t last five minutes without my protection.”
It was true.
Although her curse had worked against the phantom, she wouldn’t be able to conjure another one until she’d had a chance to rest. And she very much doubted that phantoms were the only nasties that were waiting to crawl out of the shadows.
But she’d been stripped of her pride and dignity by Marika. She wasn’t going to let it happen again.
She wasn’t this vampire’s charity case.
“What does it matter to you?”
“I think the better question is why you’re trying to get rid of me?” He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, his face bathed in the reddish glow that filled the cavern. He should have appeared . . . frightening, even sinister, standing there with his big sword and flashing fangs. Instead his male beauty was so ethereal it made her heart ache. “Do you and Yannah have a gateway hidden to escape through once you’ve managed to get rid of me?”
She clenched her hands. Beautiful or not, she wanted to punch him in the nose.
She was trying to do this for him, the jerk.
“Yes, this is all some elaborate trap that I invented with Yannah just on the off chance an annoying vampire was forced to come to my rescue,” she mocked. “Ingenious, is it not?”
“The trap wasn’t meant for me, it was meant for Laylah.”
Kata sucked in a shocked breath, raw fury racing through her at the unjust accusation.
She’d endured endless years of being held captive and unbearable torture to protect her daughter. And she would endure centuries more if necessary.