“Her research, her books, same as they’d always been. I read them all over again, looking for clues about how she kept the demon from taking over—and found none. The night the Mageguard tried to arrest me, I went back to see if I’d missed anything, before they…” He lifts a shoulder, but does not finish. Pulls out a stack of disinfecting alcohol swabs and rips one open. “I’ve been told all my life that stripping a Kingsmage of their title and separating them from their charge is a punishment so severe it isn’t done. I thought I could use what she learned to save myself, but whatever knowledge she found or ability she gained to preserve her humanity, she must have acquired it after she was taken away, or she never wrote it down, for fear of discovery. Or…” His mouth twists.

“Or?”

When he speaks, his voice is low, angry. “Or she left nothing for me to find, because she doesn’t think I can handle what it will take to stop my own descent.” He does not meet my eyes. “Going to the cabin was just staving off the inevitable, I suppose.”

I nod, tracing an invisible pattern on the chipped wooden doorjamb. “And when you returned, you just happened to end up on the same route Lark used to drive me to the Rite?”

His eyes snap to mine. “Is this you being coy, Briana? I don’t think I care for it.”

A smirk pulls at the side of my mouth. “Just asking.”

“Make your point, please.”

“I just think that if you had the presence of mind to still do your job and protect me, then you’re clearly not succumbing to your blood like the Regents said you are, or trying to hurt me, or even letting me get hurt.” My smile grows triumphant. “Proves them wrong.”

His eyes go flat, and he returns to the kit, pulling out a few bandages. “You don’t know what it’s like for demonia to bleed into your consciousness. All Merlins feel it roiling under the surface, there if we look for it.”

Sel pulls his tank down on one shoulder, trying to stretch the collar with one hand to reach his wound. The fabric begins to tear. He curses and gives up, grasping the back of the shirt overhead and pulling it up and off.

My instinct is to look away, give him privacy. But he obviously doesn’t care, because he took his damn shirt off while we were mid-conversation, so when he looks for my eyes in the mirror, I look back. He grins, then hisses when he presses the alcohol swab to the knife wound.

“We’ll find Nick. For now, you have me and William and the Oath of Service.”

He opens a package of gauze, chuckling.

Insult flares. “Why are you laughing?”