Page 85 of The Incendiary

“Captain!” Finch shouted at Valda. “She’s not allowed to use⁠—”

“—a blade,” Mavic interrupted from behind me. “And she didn’t.”

Finch turned to Valda, eyes wild with fury. “Captain⁠—”

“Reed’s right.” Valda watched me with surprise. “She used no weapon.”

Chest still heaving, I looked up. Elias’s grip had loosened on the railing, but his skin was pale, his shoulders still tense. Perhaps not so eager to see me killed, after all. I used my sleeve to wipe Finch’s blood off my face. It was an effort not to throw up my middle finger to him, Finch, and Alec Gerard, Otis Stoll, and the Sharpe brothers, who still watched me with predatory eyes from the side of the courtyard.

Finch was dragged to the infirmary by two soldiers while other cadets stared at me in disgust.

I excused myself and ran to the shower hall to rinse off my face and chest, wash out my mouth, and further compose myself. Engulfed by humid air, I saw that the discoloration from Finch’s hit was already spreading across my jaw. The bags under my false blue eyes revealed how tired I was. I brushed a few damp strands of hair off my forehead and took a deep sigh. Tired and disheveled, I could accept. As long as I stayed alive, strong, and capable. As long as I kept my eyes fierce and my fists and tongue sharp.

Ella, I need you to live.

I turned away from the mirror the minute I felt my nose burn and eyes water from the memory of his voice. He still did that to me, even when he wasn’t here: cracked me open, squeezed my heart, and sent waves of emotion flooding through my body like he was the very blood I needed to survive.

When I’d been vulnerable long enough, I pushed off the edge of the sink and strode confidently out of the shower hall. I only made it two steps out of the door before a strong hand wrapped around my forearm. I gasped and looked up to see Elias’s piercing eyes. His handsome features were distorted in anger.

Oh, good. He came down from his tower to lord over me some more.

“What the hell was that?” he snapped.

I tried to jerk my arm out of his grip, but he was too strong. “What was what?”

“Just now, with Finch!” he hissed. “Or are you so used to the taste of a man’s blood on your teeth that you’ve already forgotten?”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That was survival.”

“Why didn’t you just yield, Fera?” His voice rose, angrier than normal and tinged with hysteria. “He could have had your neck snapped within seconds! Are you so fucking stubborn that you’d sacrifice your life before your pride?”

I shrugged. “I’ll die before I yield to a man like that.”

“Even if it’s what’s best for you?”

My defenses rose to attention. “You don’t know what’s best for me.”

He stared at me, nostrils flared, like I was a puzzle he couldn’t piece together. His grip on my arm tightened to near pain while he cornered me against the building across from another cabin. The pathway was narrow, and no one could see us.

It was unnervingly intimate. I hated it.

“Take your hands off of me, Commander,” I ordered calmly.

“Or what?” he taunted. “Will you bite me, too?” His voice sent goose bumps over my collarbone and down my shoulders. I hated myself for it. Did I miss Gavin so much, was I so starved for touch, that I couldn’t control my body’s reaction to another man? Or was it the ease with which he switched from menacing to sensual that had me struggling to keep up?

“Careful,” Elias warned. “I might like it.”

“In your dreams.”

Elias leaned forward with his free hand on the wall behind me. Stay calm. But he was far too close, and my body didn’t know what to do.

“You are, actually, in my dreams.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. “And you are infuriating.”

“Good.” I grimaced. “Maybe I’ll be infuriating enough for you to leave me alone.”

“Unlikely.”

His hungry gaze was still on my lips. I refused to look down and reveal that he had any effect on me. Because while his heat, strength, and closeness stirred something in my belly, my heart and mind didn’t like this at all.