the table. It was a bundle of cloth bound tight with string. He cut through the knots with his blade and unfurled the cloth, laying out the contents on the table before them. Twelve arrow tips made from shadow blade.
‘Five spare,’ he said grinning up at the others.
‘Where did you get these?’ Flic asked, dropping to her knees and picking one up to admire it.
‘The fight at the Bradbury. I took out a Shadow Warrior on the roof. She was carrying these in a sheath on her back. I had them on me when …’ He broke off.
Flic threw her arms around his neck. ‘You may have just saved the day, Lucas.’
Lucas stood in front of the mirror holding onto the basin. Jamieson’s assessment was on point. He looked like hell. He ran his hand over his jaw, feeling the roughness of week-old stubble. His hair needed a cut too, was hanging over his collar. His cheekbones were more pronounced, his eyes a dark charcoal grey, ringed with shadows. He pulled off his shirt.
He was still in shape. He’d forced himself to start exercising when they were on the run, knowing that one day it all might come down to how fit he was, how able he was to fight.
He looked more muscled than he had been before, though perhaps it just appeared that way because he was leaner. He pressed his hand to the coarse home-made stitches that Issa had given him using a ball of twine and an embroidery needle. They seemed to have finally done the trick. The skin had finally closed over, leaving a silver scar as thick as his finger. He pressed his fingertips against his side. It wasn’t so tender anymore. The ache was buried much deeper inside him instead.
She loves you.
That’s what Flic had told him. Except it didn’t look that way.
Flic had tried to force Issa to tell him that Cyrus wasn’t in Evie’s future, that he was instead. But judging from the stuttering reply Issa had given him, she’d seen no such thing. He’d left the room at that point.
Once he would have fought and died for Evie – and, despite everything, he knew he still would. Without hesitation. She wasn’t his anymore, but he was still hers.
As he stared at himself in the mirror, deep down, where the ache resided, right in the heart of him, he knew that it was better this way, that Cyrus was better for her. He could protect her – that much he’d proved. He seemed to love her, though he wasn’t sure if love and lust were the same thing for Cyrus. And if he hurt her in any way he might just have to kill him. But most of all, Cyrus was fully human. He wouldn’t ever fade and abandon her.
Despite his feelings about Cyrus – despite the anger he could feel like a horse kick to the stomach every time he thought of Cyrus laying his hands on her and kissing her – he also recognised that Cyrus was the only man other than himself who could protect Evie from Victor. Yes, she was stronger now, but she was also wounded. The need he had to protect her was part of his DNA, buried deeper even than the ache he felt every time he thought of her.
When he came out of the bathroom Flic did a double take, grinning at him. ‘Hot stuff, my brother,’ she said. ‘How can any woman, unhuman or otherwise, resist that face?’
He scowled at her.
‘Even that face,’ she pouted. ‘It’s pure lady lust material.’
‘Listen,’ he said, ignoring Flic. ‘I’ll stay. I’ll fight with you guys. I’m going to kill Victor. But then I’m gone. And Evie won’t ever need to know. Understood?’
Flic squinted up at him, her jaw pulsing and a hurt expression on her face. ‘Where will you go?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know – I guess now the Elders are no more I’m no longer being hunted. Which means I’m free to go wherever I want.’ The truth of that made his head spin. Where was home? It had been a place once. Now it was a person. He shook off that thought. It didn’t help matters.
‘First things first,’ he said, ‘let’s focus on getting through tonight.’
Chapter 51
Cyrus was huddled over the kitchen counter with Victor, Ash and Vero, drawing up the plan for that evening. The sight of Victor and Cyrus standing so close together made Evie’s skin crawl. They’d come back to Victor’s to