The look of total shock as he’d stared at her in stunned silence had been priceless. She’d almost laughed. And then William had turned feral. Something wild glared at her through his eyes, something crazy and violent and full of lust. For a second she thought she’d have to fight him off, and then it vanished, as if his internal shutters had slammed closed.
She’d knocked his socks off. She’d planned to—if he had called her a hobo queen one more time, she would’ve strangled him. But she didn’t expect . . . that.
She’d figured he might stare, maybe flirt. But he’d gone from zero to sixty in two seconds flat, as people in the Broken said. She had never seen a man do that before.
She’d never met a man who’d looked at her like that before. Like she was irresistible.
Cerise dug through her backpack, fished out a sweat-shirt, and pulled it on. He’d made himself back down. Point for him, but no need to tempt fate.
The rush of adrenaline inside her cooled down. Warmth washed over her, followed by soft fatigue. What do you know—Lord Bill almost lost his head over a Mire girl. She grinned.
Hobo queen, shmobo queen, took you by surprise.
“Lost his head” didn’t even begin to cover it. He’d stared at her like he was some sort of maniac.
It shouldn’t have mattered. For all she knew, William looked at every woman that way. Well, maybe not quite that way, since he did manage to make it to adulthood somehow, without being murdered.
Still, it did matter. She sensed a sharp, dangerous edge to everything he did, and it pulled her in like a moth to a flame. She thought back to the fight. He’d pushed her out of the way. It wasn’t a hard push, but she had been barely standing and she fell badly, flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. For about half a minute, she lay there, woozy, trying to get up, and listening to William drawing the Hand’s freak farther away.
He’d knocked her down with the best intentions, true, but she should’ve punched him harder for it. It’s good that nobody had been there to witness it, or she would be the laughing stock of the entire Mire. Cerise grimaced. She’d really wanted to hammer one right to his jaw, but hitting someone in the jaw all but guaranteed a sore hand. That was one of the first lessons her grandmother had taught her: Take care of your hands. You need them to hold your blade.
When she had finally staggered upright, that brown monstrosity was almost fifty yards away. It was huge and armored and armed with claws. And William had gone after it with a knife. She would’ve said he was insane or stupid, except by the time she got there, the Hand’s freak was bleeding like a stuck pig. She’d almost slipped on the trail of his blood. A few more minutes and William would’ve bled him dry.
The water in the shower stopped.
Cerise took off down the hallway before William stepped out and caught her staring at the door.
A pantry lay to the left. She sorted through the cans, looking for something with meat in it.
Cerise was pretty, she knew that. In the Mire, who she was and what she could do were always taken into account. She was Cerise Mar. She had the Rats at her back and her sword was famous. Her family wasn’t exactly prime in-law material and some men had a problem with how well she handled her blade, but still there were enough guys out there who would work their asses off for a chance to be with her. If she wanted to, she could have her pick, and she did, for a while, until she got bogged down in fixing the family finances.
Knowing you were poor was one thing. But living with that knowledge, having it rubbed in your face again and again, being forced to hustle, scheme, and finagle so you could buy the kids new clothes for the winter or post bail for a relative, that was another thing. It drained her will to live.
And then there was Tobias. He turned out to be a piece of work.
Now if a man came on to her, the first thing that went through her mind was what did he really want? Was he after her or after the family’s money, what little there was of it? Was he trustworthy? How badly could he screw up, and how much would it cost the family if they had to make the issue go away? That one drank too much, this one had a kid from the first marriage that he wanted to see well taken care of by someone else, the third one humped anything that moved . . . Too reckless, too stupid, too quick to anger . . . Soon she got a reputation for being choosy, and she didn’t think she was. And even if she was, she couldn’t afford not to be.
But William didn’t know any of that. He didn’t know the first thing about her and didn’t give a damn about her family. She blindsided him and got an honest reaction.
Cerise recalled the look in his eyes and shivered.
The question was, what would she do when he came out of the shower? The thought stopped her in her tracks. He had to be in good shape. He was strong like an ox—dragging the punt through the swamp singlehanded was no picnic, and he’d picked her and the bags up and run, as if their combined weight were nothing. Her imagination tried to paint a picture of William coming out of the shower and toweling off, and she slammed the door on that thought real fast. It was fine if he was smitten. But she had other things to worry about.
A part of her really wanted to find out if his reaction was just a one-time thing or if she could get him to look at her that way again.
Cerise swiped two cans of beef stew off the shelf and headed back to the kitchen.
Doesn’t matter,
she told herself.
You’re not fifteen. Put it out of your mind. You have parents to rescue.
In a few minutes he’d step out of the shower, and she had to treat him like a potential enemy, no matter what he looked like. Safer that way.
Lord Bill was an enigma. He dressed like a blueblood, he talked like a blueblood, but he came to the Mire through the Broken. Nobles from the Weird usually couldn’t enter the Broken. They were too full of magic, and they had to turn back or ended up dying. Either he was a dud magically or there was something very funky going on with his bloodline. Then there were the eyes full of fire. And now this.
He knew of the Hand. She had to make use of that. She could always kill him if he stepped out of line.
The stove had a fancy glass top. Cerise turned it on, waited until one of the burners glowed red, set a pot on it, and dumped the stew into it. Blueblood or not, she would figure Lord Bill out sooner or later. Or they would go their separate ways and the problem would solve itself.
The door opened.
It was curiosity, Cerise decided. Just normal healthy curiosity. She pretended to be occupied with the stew.
She could just look up at him and glance away . . . Oh, Gods.
Instantly she knew she’d made a mistake.
He wore jeans and a white T-shirt. His clothes molded to him. William wasn’t built, he was carved, with hard strength and lethal speed in mind. No give, no weakness. He had the honed, lean body of a man who was used to fighting for his life and liked it that way. And he strode to her like a swordsman: sure, economical movements touched with a natural grace and strength.
Their stares met. She saw the shadow of the feral thing slide across William’s eyes, and she stopped stirring the stew.
They stared at each other for a long tense moment.
Damn it. That was not supposed to happen.
She turned to grab two metal bowls, poured the stew into them, and set them on the table. He took his seat, she took hers, their stares crossed again, and Cerise wasn’t sure which one of them was in more trouble.
William leaned forward, pulling his bowl closer as if she was about to take it from him. He needed a shave, but then he didn’t look bad with the stubble. Quite the opposite, in fact. He kept his expression calm, but she knew with some sort of inborn female intuition that he was thinking about her and about doing things with her. She felt like a fifteen-year-old dancing with a boy for the first time, nervous, and shaky, and trying not to say or do the wrong thing but thrilled deep inside every moment.
Great. She couldn’t decide which one of them was the bigger idiot.
“The food is crap. Sorry. But it’s hot,” she said, keeping her tone calm.
“I’ve had worse.” His voice was flat, too.
“This stove is great.”
William looked up from his bowl. “What do you cook on?”
“The main house has a huge woodstove and a small electric one. It’s not nearly as nice.” Cerise sighed, glancing at the glass-top stove with a small GE logo. “I want to steal this one.”
“Good luck getting it past that damn eel.” He dug into his stew.
“If we bring it along, you can always drop it on him.”
He paused, as if he was actually considering dragging the stove through the swamp.
“I’m joking,” she told him.
William shrugged and went back to his food.
A thin red stain spread through the side of his shirt.
“You’re bleeding.”
He raised his arm and looked at his side. “Must’ve reopened it. That asshole clawed me.”
Those claws were half a foot long. “How deep?”
He shrugged again. More red seeped through.
“Stop shrugging.” She jumped off her chair and walked over to him. “Lift your shirt.”
He peeled the shirt up, exposing his side. Two deep gashes crossed his ribs. Nothing life threatening but nothing that would do him any good untreated either.
“Why didn’t you bandage this?”
“No need. I heal fast.”
Yeah. “Don’t move.” She grabbed her bag and pulled out a Ziploc bag with gauze and tape and a tube of Neosporin. “Did you at least wash it out?”
He nodded.
“Good. Because I’m not dragging you across the swamp if you pass out from an infection.” She washed her hands with soap and squeezed Neosporin on the cuts. “This is medicine from the Broken. It kills infection in the wound.”
“I know what it does,” he said.
“And how would a blueblood know that?”
“No personal questions.”
Ha. Walked into her own rule face-first. Cerise applied dressing and taped up the cuts. “Oh, look. You survived unscathed.”
“Your Neosporin stinks.”
“Get over it.”
He pulled his shirt down, and she caught a glimpse of blue on his biceps. Cerise reached over and pulled his sleeve up. A large bruise covered most of his shoulder.
“You have ointment for that, too?” William asked.
“No, but now if I have to punch you, I know where it will hurt the most.” She let go of the sleeve and went to put her supplies up. That was some biceps. His back was well muscled, and you could probably bounce a quarter off his abs. Either he still was a soldier or he did something nasty for a living. Men didn’t stay in that kind of shape unless they had to.
She came back to the table.
“Thanks,” he told her.
Now was her chance, Cerise decided. She had to get as much information out of him as she could. Who knew what would happen tomorrow. “I take it that turtle thing was one of the Hand’s agents.”
He nodded.
Come on, Lord Bill, don’t keep it all to yourself.
She tried again. “What about that bat? When we ran past it, it looked like it had been dead for a while. There was a hole in its side, and you could see its innards even before you put the knife into it. It stank like carrion, too.”
He nodded again.
Maybe she was being too subtle. “Tell me about the Hand. Please.”
“No questions. You made the rule, remember?” William hooked a piece of meat with the fork and chewed quickly. He ate fast—she had barely finished half, while he was almost done.
“I’m willing to trade.”
William glanced at her from above the rim of his bowl. “An answer for an answer.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll answer me honestly?”
Cerise gave him her best sincere smile. She had two stories ready to go, depending on which way he was leaning. “Of course.”
He barked a short laugh. “You’re an Edger. You’d lie, rob me blind, and leave me naked in the swamp if you thought you’d get something from it.”
Smart bastard. “I thought you said it was your first time in the Edge?”
“And now you’re trying to sneak a question in. You think I was born yesterday.”
If he was born yesterday, he sure matured fast. “I’ll give you my word.”
He choked on the stew, coughed, tossed his head back, and laughed.
For a blueblood, he was damn hilarious. Cerise rolled her eyes, trying her best not to laugh herself. “Oh, please.”
William pointed up at the sky with his spoon. “Swear to them.”
She raised her eyebrows. “How do you know my grandparents would be upset if I lied?”
“How do you know they wouldn’t?”
Good point. She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “I promise to play fair.”