Mina couldn’t help a shiver.

* * *

Her room looked like it had been ransacked when Leo returned her to it. “Did you do that?” Mina asked, trying to shrug out of her borrowed coat. Her arm caught in the sleeve, and her right fingers were too badly burned still to be of much use. Skin, new and pink, stretched over them and she tried not to think too much about what they looked like as she tried to wriggle out of the coat. Tingling pinpricks made three of her fingers numb as the craving virus healed her.

“I was trying to find out what you’d taken with you.” Hands curled around her upper arms, the press of his fingers firm enough for her to feel his innate strength. “Hold still.”

Liar. The room was almost destroyed. It spoke of a recklessness and anger that she’d rarely seen Barrons display. A hint of chaos beneath that cool, calm mien he always wore.

But what had stirred it to the surface? Her disappearance? Or something else?

Barrons stripped the coat off her carefully, then turned her to face him. No sign on his face of the chaos around them. Only dark smudges of ash and dirt, his hair roughened, and a faint burn mark along his stubbled jaw. Smoke clung to his hardened body armor, burning her sensitive nostrils, but underneath that was the heated scent of bay rum and starched linen, scents that she always unconsciously associated with Barrons.

The shock of the explosion had left her almost numb, but now her ears were ringing and her heart raced as the reality of the situation penetrated. She was in the middle of a war, with no allies and no way of getting back to her queen.

Doubt and confusion were two emotions she rarely encountered. Her plans saw to that. If something went wrong, she always had another option to fall back on. But she’d failed. She’d made choices—the safety of the women and children here over the safety of her queen. Nothing in the past two days had gone according to plan, and she was well out of her depth.

With a man who didn’t trust her, yet had still lied to protect her. A man who…might be an ally? If she could trust him…

I don’t know what I’m doing.

So tempting to reach out and wipe some of that dirt and ash from his skin, to press her lips lightly against his. Not to take him to bed or to push at the blazing, dangerous connection between them, but something else that made her skin feel hot and tight and her chest clench up, like a vise winched tighter around her lungs.

If he reached out and took her in his arms, she wouldn’t push him away at the moment, but she wasn’t quite certain how to ask for it.

“Why did you lie to Blade?” she whispered instead.

Dark lashes blanketed his eyes. His fingers found the buttons on her shirt and he started undoing them. Mina slapped at his hand with her good one, but he simply pushed her back against the door and pinned her there.

“Behave,” he warned, “or I’ll take my belt to you.”

That made her jaw drop open, a little curl of heat flickering low in her abdomen. Not entirely an unwelcome thought, as troubling as that seemed.

“If you think I will drop such questioning simply because you’ve turned into a brutish thug,” she warned, “then you are very much mistaken. You lied to him about my aborted escape. Why?”

Those eyes looked up, filled with a troubling darkness. “Blade is not someone I would push at the best of times, most especially when his voice changes and his grammar corrects itself. That’s when he’s at his most dangerous, when the hunger is completely in control of him.”

Blood-lust. She shivered. “You’re protecting me.”

No answer passed his lips, but she saw the truth in his eyes, and it floored her. He didn’t trust her; that much was clear. But though he doubted her and had to be wondering why she was so adamant to return to court, his fingers gently peeled her shirt open, his eyes probing for the cause of her pain. “Where are you hurt?”

The moment was lost. Mina dragged her shirt from his fingers, closing it over her corset. The fine French lace was the worse for wear now, a little like herself. “I’m fine.”

“Mina, I can smell it.”

Smell it—? Then she realized what he meant. The little slash under her ribs wept blood against her skin, soaking into her corset. “It’s nothing,” she murmured, pushing away from him. Not enough blood in the last couple of days conspired to weaken her. If she’d been stronger, this should have healed by now.

“Duchess, let me see what—”

“It will heal.” Duchess. That hated word. Trust was an ambiguous thing in the air between them. No reason not to show him but…it felt uncomfortably like she was opening herself up to him. “I shouldn’t see why you give a damn.”

His eyes narrowed. “So be it.”

The world upended as he caught her around the waist and gently lifted her up against his shoulder. Mina snatched at his shirt with her good hand, tempted to kick him. “Put me down.”

“As my lady wishes.” She didn’t like the tone he was using, like all that anger was leashed, just beneath the surface. Then she didn’t have time to think about it. Her backside hit the seat of a chair and Barrons jerked the shirt down over her shoulders, trapping her arms. “It seems I won’t have to use my belt, after all.”

“What are you doing?”

He tugged the sleeve carefully over her burned hand, then slipped the other off her left wrist with considerably less aplomb. “Getting some bloody answers.”

Her wrists were dragged behind her and something looped around them. Her shirt. Mina’s mouth dropped open, then she kicked out. “Don’t you dare tie me up.” She might as well not have bothered. The shirtsleeve pulled tight around her wrists, and he tied her to the lower rung of the chair.

Mina brought her boot heel down on the rung at the front. The vibration ricocheted up her leg, but the rung didn’t break on the first strike. Barrons caught her knees before she could do it again, trapping her.

Breathing hard, she glared at him.

“You’re bleeding again.” That black gaze dropped to her side and the corset she wore. His cheekbones tightened with a fierceness she recognized, his lips parting as his gaze locked on her breasts.

“Of course I am, you manhandling oaf!” She strained to move her knee under his heated palm. Couldn’t shift him. “Get off me!”

Something heated his expression. Something that made her body still. “Or?” he murmured, fingers wrapping around the inside of her knees as he forced her legs to part.