Henry’s parents are also missing from the table, but I heard my mother tell them something about a rare painting of Mountain Haven that hangs in our library. They might have gone to see it. Maybe that’s where Libby and Kellan are. My brother Thomas is also notably absent, though his wife Veronica is chatting with my sisters Electra and Sophie. There’s one more empty seat at the table next to Able.
Henry follows my gaze. “Where did Rafe disappear to?”
“Hopefully the Divine hells,” I grumble.
Henry smirks, but it’s there and gone. He tilts his head in a strange, predatory way, like an animal straining to hear something. Then, he grabs me.
I try to pull away. “What are you?—”
He throws me to the ground and covers me with his body. A loud blast rattles the house. The windows shatter. My head smacks against the marble floor, and the world goes dark.
9
HENRY
Glass rains down in an endless stream. I curl around Harlow, trying to shield her from the shrapnel.
For a moment, there’s an awful silence. My body is frozen—stuck in a panicked echo of the past. I’ve heard a terrible, violent silence like this before.
Then, shouts and cries ring out as the dust settles. The room smells like smoke and blood, but there’s a hint of something fruity and fermented. The wine. There was a wagon of it sitting out front when we arrived tonight. Someone could have easily snuck some sort of magical incendiary device in with the real wine.
Harlow groans beneath me. She mumbles something, but my ears are ringing from the blast.
I roll to the side, ignoring the bite of glass in my arm as I rise to stand and pull Harlow to her feet. I take her face in my hands.
“What did you say?”
She narrows her eyes. “You covered me before the explosion.”
That’s going to be hard to explain. I brush a thumb over the lump already forming on the back of her head. “I think you hit your head pretty hard.”
Her bodyguard is beside us in a second, taking hold of her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Henry protected me from the glass,” she says.
“I noticed.” Gaven’s suspicious gaze is fixed on me. “He’s a fast thinker.”
I can hear the unspoken accusation in his words. He also noticed that I moved too soon. I knew he would be an issue eventually, but I’m going to have to deal with him sooner rather than later.
Shouts outside the shattered windows draw our attention. “Bleed no more!”
“Rebels,” Gaven grumbles.
The shouts are close. I need to get Harlow and my parents out of here.
“This kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if they didn’t insist on having everyone important and magical in one room,” Harlow grumbles.
The room is alive with shouting and groans of pain, but Harlow seems surprisingly calm as she reaches into a hidden pocket in her dress and withdraws a dagger.
“We need to get you to safety,” Gaven says. He eyes me skeptically. “It would be wise to leave him behind.”
“Play nice, Gaven,” she chides. “We need him. Trust me. I’d leave him if I could.”
“Thanks,” I grumble.
I place my hand on her back to guide her out of the mayhem and into the hallway. The Stellarium Blossoms scent of her skin and the iron smell of blood hit me.
I pull her to a stop. “You’re wounded.”
