still looming over me by the wall, as if he couldn’t quite tear himself away but also didn’t know what he was doing there. “I was taking out frustrations I shouldn’t have directed at you, at least not entirely. I wish… that I’d been less of an ‘ice-cold prick’ toward Snap lately. Maybe he thought he’d crossed some line I wouldn’t abide by, and I’d made him feel he couldn’t even check with me to see where he stood.”
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so shocked that Omen was lowering himself to admitting any regrets at all. “You think I haven’t been beating myself up as much as I tried to beat up you? If I’d been more careful what I said around my ex—if I’d paid more attention to the state Snap was in last night—”
Omen interrupted me with a hoarse chuckle. “Suffice to say there’s plenty of blame to go around. Maybe you didn’t send me up in flames, but you put up a pretty good fight.”
I guessed that was a high compliment coming from him. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the flames that had been surging through me just minutes ago, though. If I’d let myself hurl the full force of them at him, just how bad would it have been?
Then he raised his hand to my hair, and those thoughts fell away. My awareness condensed to the warmth of his knuckles grazing my cheek as he fingered a few stray strands—not so different from how Snap had the first morning we’d met.
Omen’s gaze slid from his hand against my face to my eyes. The fiery light had faded from his, but the pale blue didn’t look quite so icy now. I found my hand drifting forward to rest against his chest, taking in the slowing rhythm of his breaths beneath the taut muscles.
What the hell was I doing? I couldn’t tell you. Whatever it was, it seemed to draw Omen nearer. He leaned in, his fingers sliding down to stroke across my chin, and a new pulse of heat flared in my lips. I wet them, my pulse kicking up a notch, not entirely sure what I wanted but wanting it very much at the same time.
His breath tickled over my face. Then he shoved the hand he’d leaned against the wall to push completely away from me, his gaze jerking toward the RV.
“We should get you patched up again before you make any more of a mess of yourself, Disaster,” he said, back to business as usual.
I peeled myself off the wall with only a smidgeon of disappointment. Whatever line we’d come close to crossing just now, I couldn’t help suspecting it might be better if we stayed on this side of it.
“And then back to training?” I suggested.
Omen shook his head. “No. I think we’ve both had enough of pushing you around. I know you’ll fight as well as you can when the need is there.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted by him throwing in the towel. I was trudging after him toward the Everymobile, debating just how suicidal I’d be to put up an argument, when the door flew open and Bow stared out at us.
“Please—Gisele—I think she’s getting worse.”
27
Sorsha
Other than a glimpse as the other shadowkind had hustled her onto the RV, I hadn’t seen Gisele since the start of the battle. At the sight of her lying crumpled in the master bedroom, horror overwhelmed any sense I’d had of my own discomforts.
Her slim, graceful body had deflated, limbs limp and cheeks sunken. What skin I could make out had lost its pearly sheen to a creeping gray undertone, as if her entire being had clouded over. Most of her, though, was covered with rough fabric wrapped tight and dappled with yellow-green smears.
From what the shadowkind had said, those bindings had stabilized her before. Now, thin trails of smoke were seeping through the cloth. Omen took one look at her and made a noise of consternation.
As he grabbed a jar off the bedside table, Bow hovered uneasily nearby. “I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to put on even more…”
“We do this and give her a chance to recover, or she leaks away into nothingness,” Omen said. “It’s not much of a choice.”
I didn’t understand why there was any debate at all until he started slathering the pale green paste from the jar onto the bandages. Gisele’s face remained flaccid, but her arms twitched, her