"That means it is something that will make me mad."
"Yes. It will, so promise first."
"No."
Liam frowned. "You are supposed to reassure me."
"You attempted to break into Felix’s palace with a screwdriver. I am no longer making uninformed promises."
Liam glanced toward the sealed doors.
He was beginning to regret opening his mouth.
Unfortunately, Arik had noticed the hesitation.
His free hand rose to Liam’s jaw, turning his face back with deceptive gentleness. The gold in his eyes remained bright enough to make the nearby ether lines tremble.
"Tell me."
"I may have brought something through the Gate."
Arik became completely still.
The hand at Liam’s waist tightened.
"What?"
"I did not bring it deliberately."
"That clarification has not helped."
"When Cain disintegrated, most of his ether fed the Gate." Liam paused. "Not all of it."
Arik’s expression emptied.
It was considerably more frightening than anger.
"One of the hands holding me changed before I was pulled through," Liam continued carefully. "It stopped feeling like the Gate. It felt warmer. Almost like your ether, except wrong."
"Where did it go?"
"Into my mark."
Golden ether exploded silently beneath Arik’s skin.
The bridge’s stabilizing rings answered with a deep metallic resonance, and beyond the security field, every guard turned rigid.
Liam pressed closer instinctively, both to calm him and to make it more difficult for Arik to do anything dramatic.
"You promised not to become angry."
"I refused to promise."
"Yes, but I was hoping you would respect the spirit of the request."
"How long have you known?"
"I felt something after we arrived in Nuria, but my channels were damaged and your ether was everywhere. I assumed it was residue from the bond."
"And now?"
"My ether returned yesterday."
Arik’s stare sharpened.
Liam looked toward Felix’s palace.
"The fragment woke with it."
For several seconds, Arik said nothing.
Then, very softly, "Woke."
"It reacts to this residence."
"That is why you came here."
"It is one of the reasons."
"One?"
"I was also bored."
Arik closed his eyes.
Liam suspected he was counting.
"I did not tell anyone because the physicians would have sealed me inside a containment room," Liam added.
"They still may."
"And you would have forbidden me from investigating."
"I did forbid you."
"Without sufficient information."
"Because you withheld the information."
"That is an unnecessarily circular interpretation."
Arik opened his eyes again.
"Show me."
Liam hesitated.
Arik’s voice dropped lower.
"Eshara."
Liam sighed, then released a careful thread of blue-white ether.
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then something beneath the mark at his nape answered.
A thin strand of tarnished gold slipped into Liam’s ether—dark at its edges, fractured through the center, but carrying a sovereign pattern unmistakably close to Arik’s.
The sealed palace doors were illuminated with the same sickly, shadowed color that had consumed Cain Canmore.
Across the entrance, the security grid rearranged itself into a single message:
TRANSFERRED AUTHORITY RECOGNIZED.
Arik read it.
The air around him went deathly quiet.
Liam looked up at his mate and immediately decided that concealing the fragment had perhaps been a minor error.
"No."
That was all Arik said.
Only one quiet, absolute word delivered with enough finality that the golden lines running through the hovering bridge dimmed as though the structure itself had accepted the command.
Liam opened his mouth. "Arik—"
Arik bent, caught him around the waist, and lifted him cleanly off the ground.
The world tilted.
A second later, Liam found himself hanging over Arik’s shoulder like an inadequately secured sack, his hair falling across his face and Arik’s arm locked firmly around the backs of his thighs.
For several stunned seconds, Liam said nothing.
Then, "Put me down."
"No."
"This is ridiculous."
"You attempted to carry contaminated sovereign ether into a palace constructed by the man who murdered me."
"I was not carrying it into the palace. It was already inside me."
Arik’s hand tightened against his leg.
Liam reconsidered the usefulness of that clarification.
"That," Arik said with terrifying calm, "was not better."
Behind the outer security field, the guards had turned around.
Every one of them immediately looked away again.
Liam pushed himself up against Arik’s back, attempting to see the palace entrance. The grid remained illuminated, the words still burning across its surface in corrupted gold.
"We cannot leave now. It recognized the fragment."
"Yes."
"That may be the only way to access Felix’s records."
"Yes."
"It might deactivate if we move away."
"I sincerely hope it does."
Liam frowned at the back of Arik’s head. "You are being irrational."
"You have been healthy for less than a day."
"My channels are almost completely healed."
"After being poisoned, dragged through an ancient Gate, stranded between dimensions, and nearly torn apart by ether."
"That was several days ago."
Arik began walking back across the bridge.
The city opened beneath them in impossible layers of floating terraces, white towers, and rivers of ether falling soundlessly into the clouds. Liam watched it upside down for several moments before deciding the view did nothing to improve his position.
"Arik."
"No."
"I have not asked anything."
"You were going to."
"You cannot answer every future statement with no."
"No."
Liam struck one palm against Arik’s back.
Arik did not react.
"Put me down and let us discuss this like adults."
"You surrendered the privileges of adult discussion when you concealed an unknown ether fragment inside your body and came here with a screwdriver."
"I did not conceal it inside my body deliberately."
"You concealed the knowledge."
"Because I knew you would react like this."
"You knew I would prevent you from doing something suicidal."
"It is not suicidal if I understand the mechanism."
"You do not understand it."
"That is why I need to examine it."
Arik stopped.
For one hopeful moment, Liam thought reason had prevailed.
Then Arik turned his head slightly and spoke toward the guards beyond the barrier.
"Send for Severin to secure this palace, and Lord Liam doesn’t have clearance to approach it in a ten-mile radius.