I was intensely conscious of the single man in the doorway, but I was sure there were more.
Sebastian bent toward me so that our hoods touched. “Don’t look. Two on the roof across the street. Another on the one above us. Excellent.” His voice was a whisper, but I detected the excitement beneath it.
If he hadn’t told me not to look, I would have. I swallowed. I needed to get my act together. But—“excellent”—? I opened my mouth to ask, but he beat me to it.
“If Grievan’s men are still here,” he whispered. “We may not be too late.”
My heart accelerated. Of course. If the exchange had already gone down, they’d be long gone.
Fortunately, my yelp only added to my improvised cover as Sebastian’s arm dropped to my waist, plucking me off my feet and sweeping me into an alley.
He planted me against the wall and leaned over me, with a hand on each side of my head. He was close enough that I felt his body heat, and I looked up into eyes gleaming silver.
They weren’t focused on me, but rather up the alley. And their expressions froze my heart. They were lit with a fierce kind of joy.
Anticipation, I realized, of the battle to come.
This was the Bellati that Matt had seen in action in the alley. Just as Matt came alive when he fought, so too did Sebastian.
“Youlikethis.” I could barely breathe.
“I be born for this,” he corrected as his gaze came back to me. “I am Bellati. But you be not. You be not here to fight. Follow my lead, but stay on the fringes. If you see an opportunity to grab the twins, do so. But do not engage with those that will fight. Be I clear?”
His expression brooked no argument. But I needed to know. “How good are you, really? Can you fight Dragons? There is only one of you.”
His eyes flared. “Good enough,” he said.
I swallowed and nodded.
“We’ll have to get onto the roof.” He was looking up, scanning the walls.
“The roof?”
“Dragons always go up,” he stated. “They’ll be doing the exchange on the hotel’s roof. But we need an access far enough away to not alert the guards.”
Up. Right.
He stiffened when I giggled loudly, and squirmed out from under his arm, before swaying deeper into the network of alleys running behind the buildings.
He followed, although his staggering could use some work. I sensed eyes on us, but it was more mild curiosity rather than true intensity.
The alleys really were a maze, and I feared getting lost in them. Sebastian grabbed me by the elbow, and we kept our drunken pursuit-of-lust façade as he directed us through. I wasn’t as impervious to his hands drifting over me as he seemed to be. My breathlessness was not just due to exertion. And our route got darker and darker until I couldn’t see where we were going.
“Here,” he whispered, stopping beneath a rusty ladder.
“The last time I climbed one of these, it didn’t go well,” I complained as he began his ascent.
He didn’t reply, but although the rungs creaked beneath him, they held. I sighed and grabbed the first rung.
His shadow vanished over the edge long before I managed my best chimpanzee impersonation to the top. The moment I reached it, he grabbed me and physically lifted me into the shadows thrown by an enormous chimney.
I didn’t know whether to discourage this display of manly muscle, or not. When Matt had done it, it made my heart flutter.
To be honest, I had much the same reaction with Sebastian.
He lowered his lips to my ear. “Grievan will have his men close. Stick with me.” And he was gone, in a swirl of cloth and musky scent.
I followed with far less enthusiasm but a high degree of commitment. No way I’d let these schmucks make off with those poor kids. But Talakai might be with them. And the thought of Sebastian fighting the Dragon was twisting me up inside, regardless of what Talakai had done.
