Cara’s face reddened further, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. Alban saw blood leak from a wound in her shoulder, but the girl ignored it as she challenged Margrit. “I made my choice. I would make the same one again, if I thought it would save my people.”

“Ah, there we go. The power of conviction, stripped bare of pomposity. That’s what I was after.” Margrit shrugged, minute movement against Alban’s chest that made her seem terribly fragile. “It was probably the right choice, even if I think you made it because you were pissed off at me.”

“You took everything we tried to gain!”

“Bullshit.” Margrit pushed away from Alban more cautiously this time, leaning heavily into the support he offered as she got to her feet. “The one thing you really wanted was legitimacy, and you got that. But as it happens, He giveth and He taketh away. Get me Kaimana, Cara. I’m going to make a deal.”

It was a motley army that escorted Margrit back into Grace’s tunnels. Alban carried her, despite her weak protests that she could manage the journey on her own two feet. Not even she believed it, but part of her insisted that the pretense was important. That, in the wake of being newly alive, struck her as a tactic she should reconsider. There had to be room and reason to stop fighting battles that were only for show.

Alban’s clothes were damp with blood, and hers stiffened and dried in folds stuck with his. The relentless sense of humor that had haunted her since she’d awakened suggested that was romantic. Disgusting, but still somehow romantic. More likely it was the slow, steady beat of Alban’s heart beneath her ear and the surety of his arms that bore romance, but amusement niggled at her anyway.

Grace walked ahead of them, a swaying black-clad form with no evident need for a light against the darkness. Margrit’s gaze stayed on her for long moments, watching the way shadows accepted and released her as she led them through the gloom. Impossible answers itched at the corners of Margrit’s mind, not quite ready for revelation, and darting away when she tried to follow them. She pressed her eyes shut, then opened them again to follow Tony with her gaze.

He was a step or two behind Grace, his flashlight splashing bright white circles on the walls and tunnel floors. Margrit could see tension in his shoulders and resignation in his walk, and wanted to reach out and reassure him somehow. She didn’t try: first, she was too far away, and second, she was no longer a source from which he would draw comfort. Weary regret wrapped around her at that idea, and she let her eyes close, trusting Alban to carry her without her watching the way.

That, too, struck her as a new thing, born in the last minutes since her awakening. She’d once claimed she liked the lack of control over her life that running in Central Park offered her. Grace had dismissed that with a snort, and now Margrit wondered if the blond vigilante had been right. She was out of control now, but she felt safe, and it was distinctly different from late-night jogging. Then, she realized, she had felt in control, even if that was nothing more than an illusion.

Light footsteps echoed around them, the sound making her flinch awake, though she hadn’t realized she’d slept. The gargoyles and injured selkies who walked with them all moved with eerie silence, but the tunnels themselves picked up sounds her ears couldn’t and reverberated them back at her, making her inhuman escort audible.

Not really her escort; that was a self-centered, human thought. They had their own reasons to retreat under the city. Wounds to lick, if selkies did that. Probably, she thought with another tickle of humor. After all, even humans used kisses to banish minor hurts. It wasn’t far at all from licking injuries, and humans had no animal form to revert to. Seal-shaped selkies very likely did use the oldest possible method of cleaning cuts.

Margrit pressed her temple against Alban’s chest, trying to stop her mind from such random wanderings. Blood oozed under the pressure and she grimaced. There were too many things to deal with to succumb to weakness. Janx was furious with her, and that had to be remedied somehow. More than just by fulfilling his demand to bring Daisani down; she wanted the dragonlord to like her again.

Of course, if she did succeed in toppling the corporate bloodsucker, it was unlikely she would have a future in which to worry about whether Janx still liked her or not. Irrationally reassured by the thought, Margrit opened her eyes and found that while she’d dozed, they’d traveled most of the distance to Grace’s downtown hub.

“Why here?” After a little while of unuse, her voice croaked like she’d—Margrit winced, trying to stop the thought before it finished, but the analogy worked its inexorable way through to completion: like she’d had her throat cut. Still cringing, she said, “Won’t there be a lot of kids around?”

“It’s Friday night,” Grace said with humor. “Tonight they’re topside having fun, and this center’s got more lockable doors than any of the others. It’s safest for all of you and yours, and that means it’s safest for me and mine. There’ll be plenty of hot water for bathing in,” she added to Alban. “I’ll need the cisterns refilled, though, after you’re done scrubbing. And I’d just burn those clothes, if I were you.”

“They’re too wet,” Margrit said tiredly. “Too bad. I liked this shirt. I can walk.” She patted Alban’s arm. He shifted his hold, but didn’t put her down, and after a few seconds she decided that was agreeable.

Agreeable. A little blood loss, and she became the heroine of a Jane Austen novel. Margrit tried to laugh, but exhaustion swamped her again.

The next time she awakened it was because cool stone was beneath her body, chilling her all the way through. Alban, stripped to the waist and carrying two steaming buckets of water, edged into his room as she sat up. The front of his slacks were entirely soaked in blood from the knees down, and the thighs were badly spotted with it, all the pale material discolored and stiffening as it dried. Margrit shuddered, suddenly aware of how cold she was. Cold from her center to her skin, as if her furnace had shut down.

Alban looked pained at her tremble. “Forgive the accommodations. There seemed little point in putting you on the bed while you were still…”

“Covered in gore?” Margrit picked at the buttons of her blouse as Alban poured the water into a tub she’d never seen in his room before. Fingers too thick to operate properly, she let her hands fall and watched the muscles in his back play easily, as if he picked up a piece of paper instead of gallons of water. A moment later he put the buckets aside and turned back to her, spoiling one lovely view but offering another. Margrit hunched her shoulders against the chill and managed a smile. “I could watch you do that all night.”

Gentle humor crossed his expression. “Except you seem to keep falling asleep. Shall I leave you to bathe?”

“No!” Sudden panic spurted in her at the idea, its wake leaving her more exhausted than before. “I don’t even think I can undress myself, much less be trusted in a bath. I’d probably drown, and I’ve had enough of being dead for one night.” To her horror, tears scalded her eyes as she spoke.

Alban crossed and knelt by her, a solid, comforting presence as he began to undo the buttons she’d been too clumsy to manage. “I believe I’ve had enough of you being dead for a lifetime. When you’re stronger, I think I’ll take the opportunity to go to pieces on you.” Teasing glinted in his eyes as she gave him a sharp look.

“Go to pieces, huh? I didn’t know you knew words like that.”

“I’ve been keeping bad company of late,” Alban said solemnly. He undressed her with quiet efficiency, no eroticism in the act, for which Margrit was wearily grateful. Passion stereotypically arose in the aftermath of danger, but she had no energy left for anything beyond relief that someone was there to care for her. Alban lifted her into the bath with all the gentleness of a practiced nurse, and she sank to its bottom with a whimper.