Magic Rises

fork. Barabas was right. I needed more than a minute. I needed to splash some water on my face.
    Across from me a short hallway led to the side. If I took it, it should lead me to one of the two bathrooms. I stepped into the hallway. A door stood ajar on my right side, leading into a small room where a set of dark wooden stairs climbed up.
    Maybe it was the way to the minstrel’s gallery.
    I climbed the stairs. If there were any snipers up there, I wanted to meet them for a friendly conversation. If not, I could look at the dining hall unnoticed.
    The stairs ended. I passed through a doorway in the stone wall and found myself in the minstrel’s gallery in the great hall. Score. Something went right today.
    The great hall had no windows, the only illumination coming from the electric lights or, right now, with magic up, from the feylanterns shaped like faux torches. It could’ve been midmorning or midnight—the outside light made no difference. The gallery lay soaked in gloom, the dark wooden beams almost black. I walked the length of it. Two doors, one at the far wall and the other at a midway point, interrupted the stone wall. Aside from that, nothing. Empty.
    I leaned down on the wooden rail. Below me the great hall stretched, brightly lit and loud with people. The windows in the castle hallways must’ve been opened to vent the air heated with human breath and still-warm food, and a draft flowed from below, bringing with it a hint of spices and stirring the long blue-and-silver banners on the wall to the left of me. From this point I was probably nearly invisible to those beneath me.
    I hadn’t realized how high the gallery was. Leaping over the rail was out of the question. My bones would snap from the impact.
    Curran strode through the door into the hall. He walked to the head table, where Barabas sat on the side next to Mahon, and asked Barabas something. Barabas spread his arms in response. Curran’s face snapped into a familiar unreadable mask. He sat back in his place in the middle.
    A moment later Lorelei floated up. She wore tight jeans and an off-the-shoulder, nearly sheer blue peasant blouse. Her hair streamed over her shoulders. Her face looked flawless. How the hell did she have time to change and get here so fast?
    Curran turned to her and said something. She sat next to him. Her smile was nothing short of radiant.
    It felt like someone had dropped a brick into my stomach.
    She asked him something. He reached for a plate of carved meat.
    If he offered her food, I’d jump right off this gallery and kick him in the face with my broken legs.
    Curran moved the dish toward her.
    Don’t.
    He set the platter down.
    Lorelei smiled at him, speared a slice off the platter with her fork, and leaned in to tell him something, a little sly light in her eyes.
    They were sitting too close. I stared at Curran, wishing I could see through his skull into his head. Why are you doing this? Why?
    “Perhaps because she is younger and fresher,” Hugh said behind me.
    I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. I didn’t hear him walk up to me either. Shit. This situation needed to unscrew itself up really fast, because it was distracting me.
    Hugh came to lean next to me, a hulking shadow. He wore jeans and a gray T-shirt. The thin fabric lay across his broad back, following the contours of his trapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles. I knew this build: a meld of strength and high endurance, flexible, mobile, but capable of crushing power. Hugh would be very difficult to kill.
    He turned, watching Curran down below. “Perhaps he wants her because she is a shapeshifter and his people would accept her. She’ll birth him a litter of cubs and everyone will cheer. Perhaps because she would bring a political alliance. Perhaps because she won’t argue with him. Some men enjoy obedience.”
    “Thank you for your analysis, Doctor. Measuring others by your own standard?”
    He tilted his head, presenting me with a view of his square jaw. Punching it would be a bitch. I’d bruise my hand for sure. Voron had chosen well. Usually I didn’t have any issues with my body, but right now I wished for another six inches of height and an extra thirty pounds of muscle. It wouldn’t make us even, but it would tighten the gap.
    “Interested in my standards?” Hugh asked.
    Danger, icy lake ahead. “No.”
    “If we’re talking a one-night stand, I’m looking for enthusiasm. Perhaps for someone fearless. Blind obedience is