Chapter 234: The Private Wing (2)

"No," Liam repeated more quietly. "I want to see it."

Arik’s eyes searched his face.

Liam hated that he had to add, "Not the portrait."

The tension in Arik eased by a fraction.

"I’m going to behave," Liam said, with the dignity of a man deeply offended by having to reassure armed people that he understood basic survival.

Then he walked backwards a strategic distance from the desk, the photographs, the covered portrait, and Arik’s increasingly intense need to stand between him and every object Felix had ever owned.

Unfortunately, strategic distance required spatial awareness.

Liam’s back hit the wall.

Something sharp pricked his finger.

He hissed.

Arik moved.

One second he was near the desk, the next he had Liam’s hand in his, gold eyes fixed on the small bead of blood rising from Liam’s fingertip.

Mezos abandoned the black case as if it had become less interesting than Liam’s pulse, which was honestly flattering and irritating in equal measure.

"It is a scratch," Liam said.

Arik did not look reassured.

"It is Felix’s wall," Arik replied.

"That is a fair counterargument."

Mezos lifted a scanner, passing it over Liam’s finger and then over the small bronze ornament set into the wall behind him. It was shaped like a curling vine, so decorative and useless that Liam had ignored it entirely. At the center of it sat a tiny thorn.

The thorn now held a smear of Liam’s blood.

Nothing poisoned the scan.

Nothing entered his channels.

The ward on Liam’s chest did not flash.

Arik still looked ready to execute the wall.

Then the wall clicked.

Everyone froze.

A narrow seam appeared beside the ornament, no wider than a finger.

Liam looked at it.

Mezos looked delighted in the way only terrible discoveries delighted him.

Arik looked murderous.

"Nothing happened," Liam said, trying to make his mate less murderous.

The wall clicked again.

The seam widened by half an inch.

Liam corrected himself. "Something small happened."

Arik’s grip on his wrist tightened.

Liam glanced down.

Arik loosened at once, but did not let go.

Mezos stepped forward, eyes sharp. "Hidden panel."

"No ward signature," one of the Shadows said from the door.

"No modern one," Mezos replied.

He placed two fingers against the seam and fed ether into it.

Nothing moved.

Mezos tried again, this time harder. Silver ether spread through the ornament, crawled along the seam, and died as if the wall had swallowed it without interest.

The panel did not move.

Mezos’s smile vanished.

Arik’s gaze sharpened. "You cannot open it?"

"I can open most things."

"That was not an answer."

"No."

Liam leaned slightly closer.

Arik immediately pulled him back by the hand.

"I am looking."

"You look with intent."

"I have been unfairly accused of that all morning."

"Accurately accused," Mezos said, still studying the panel.

Liam ignored him and stared at the ornament instead.

The bronze vine was old. Older than the furniture, older than Felix’s renovations, older perhaps than the wing itself. It did not match the room. Everything else in Felix’s sitting room had been chosen with cold elegance, but this looked almost primitive by comparison, hand-worked and slightly uneven. The thorn at its center was not decorative.

It was a needle...

A lock.

Liam looked at the smear of blood.

Then at the narrow seam.

"Oh," he said.

Arik’s head turned slowly toward him. "No."

"I have not said anything."

"You said oh."

"That is not legally binding."

"It is usually catastrophic."

Mezos’s expression regained dangerous life. "Blood lock?"

"Possibly," Liam said, tugging his hand from Arik, but the man didn’t let go.

"Canmore blood?" Mezos asked.

"Felix would not use Canmore blood," Arik said. "Too many Canmores."

Liam looked at the ornament again, the old metal dark around the drop of his blood. "Not Canmore, then."

The room went very quiet.

Arik understood first.

His eyes dropped to Liam’s hand, then to the ring, then to his own right hand where Liam’s mark was still clear under the sleeve of his shirt.

"No," Arik said again, and this time there was nothing playful in it.

Liam looked up at him. "It already opened a notch."

"And that is enough."

"It is absolutely not enough."

"Liam."

"If this is a blood lock connected to Felix, Goliath, or my altered ether signature, then refusing to inspect it does not make it safer."

"It makes you safer."

"Temporarily."

"That is my preferred category."

Liam’s expression softened, not much, but enough that Arik clearly hated it.

"I am not putting my hand inside a beast’s mouth," Liam said. "I am touching blood that is already there to the ornament that already pricked me."

"That sentence did not improve anything."

"It improved accuracy."

Mezos, traitor that he was, said, "The first activation already occurred. A controlled second contact may give us more information."

Arik looked at him.

Mezos did not flinch, but he did become very interested in professional neutrality.

"I said controlled," he added.

Arik’s jaw worked.

Behind his eyes, something ancient and furious moved.

Liam felt it like a pressure in the bond, not aimed at him but around him. Goliath did not like the wall. He did not like the ornament. He especially did not like Liam bleeding for a lock Felix had hidden.

Liam took one slow breath. "Arik."

"No."

"You said you wanted me close."

"Yes."

"I am close."

"That is not how that works."

"It is exactly how that works."

For a moment, Arik looked as if he might carry Liam out of the room and let Mezos destroy the entire wall from a safe distance.

Then the clock in the corner ticked again.

Once.

Loudly.

It had no right to tick.

Arik looked at it.

Liam used the moment.

He pressed his wounded fingertip to the bronze thorn.

The room inhaled.

Ether moved from Liam’s blood, as if the ornament had drunk a single thread of him and recognized the taste.

Arik cursed.

The seam split open.

Stone shifted behind the wallpaper without grinding, without dust, without any modern mechanism Liam could hear. The wall folded away by inches, then feet, revealing darkness and the edge of another door behind it.

No.

Not another door.

Double doors.

Tall, black, and ancient, set into a frame of pale stone that did not belong to Canmore Palace at all.

Liam stared.

Arik went utterly still.

Mezos whispered something under his breath that was probably not a prayer but sounded like one.

Liam stepped forward before Arik’s arm came across his waist like a bar.

"Do not," Arik said.

Liam did not argue.

He did not need to.

Through the narrow gap between the double doors, beyond a room that should not have existed inside Felix’s private wing, stood the Gate.

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