PROMISE

CHAPTER 23

"Get up."

Hain woke to the sound of Sanger's voice. Darkness hung in the room, only broken by the thin stripe of light leaking around the drawn shade of the room's single window.

Hain blinked the bleariness from his eyes. Weariness clung to him, urging his body back toward sleep.

"What time is it?"

Sanger walked to the window and yanked the shade away. Sunlight dumped into the room.

"Time to get up, and out of my hospital."

Hain squinted against the sunshine. "The hospitality in this place leaves something to be desired."

Sanger's voice was pure heat. "This isn't an inn."

"I should hope not," Hain said, rolling away from the open window. "I don't see how this place could stay open if you let the maids come bursting into guest rooms, demanding they get out of bed."

Sanger said nothing. Instead, she walked to the end of the bed, and took hold of the blankets.

"I said," she paused, tightening her grip before jerking on the blankets, "get up."

Hain screamed. Then cursed. Then, realizing he was naked, scrambled to cover his most vulnerable parts.

"Heaven and Hell!" he shouted, his sleepiness ripped away with the blankets. "Why did you do that?"

"I told you to get up. You didn't listen."

Sanger's voice was, Hain thought later, unreasonably calm given the situation. Almost as though she'd been expecting the scene to play out as it had.

"Why am I naked?" Hain shouted. "And where are my clothes?" A frantic gleam shone in his mismatched eyes. "And why the hell are you just staring at me?"

"Believe me, I'd rather be looking anywhere else," she said, sounding disgusted.

"Staring. Looking. Whatever!" Hain made a flapping gesture at her with one hand. "Just turn some other way that's not at me."

"I can't."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Ew." Sanger said, made a face. "Definitely can't," she said. "It's your first time out of bed and I need to make sure you don't fall. Because if you fall, then you'll have to stay here longer, and I will literally jump from the highest building in Promise if I have to keep looking at your stupid face."

He spoke slowly over every word. "Where are my clothes?"

She nodded toward a crumpled pile atop the room's only chair.

Hain's gaze flicked to the clothes, then back to Sanger. Shadows pushed down over his eyes.

"You couldn't have put them closer?"

"Think of it as a test to see how stable you are." She twirled her hand in a hurry-up gesture. "The faster you get up, the faster I can leave, and stop looking at your," she paused, looking his body up and down, "well, all of you."

Hain wanted to argue, but he bit back the words. Instead, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, and hurried to dress.

As he bent to put the pants on, his mop of shaggy black hair fell over his eyes. He reached a hand to push it back, only to feel short, bristly hair scraping at his fingers where he'd been wounded.

He turned a surprised look on Sanger.

"Yes, I shaved the side of your head, because you're apparently on a strike against haircuts."

Hain scowled from behind the fabric as he slid a shirt over his head. "Is there a reason I have to leave right this instant?"

"Aside from the obvious not wanting to look at you," Sanger said, "Hume wants you downstairs for a meeting. Which, by the way, is happening soon. So if you could speed this up?"

Hain felt his patience snap.

"Alright. I get it. I tricked you into telling me things you didn't want to, and you're mad about it," he spat. "Can you dial back the attitude a bit?"

Sanger's moonstone eyes seemed to glow hot at his words.

"Now that I know you're not going to fall, I'm leaving." She leveled a finger at the door to his room. "Get out when you're done. And do not come back."

With that, she spun on her heel, and marched from the room, leaving only the vitriol of her words behind her.

Hain finished dressing slowly, relishing the feeling of actual clothes, and actual shoes. When he was done, he left the room, and found a Foew guard lingering outside the door, his hand gripped around one of the lightning clubs he'd seen in the hands of the others.

"You must be my date to wherever we're going," Hain said. "Not my type, but I suppose you'll do."

The guard's expression remained firm.

"Sanger said you think you're funny."

"She must have meant that I am funny," Hain said. "It's an easy mistake to make."

"No, she was right the first time," the guard said. "I lead. You follow."

Without giving Hain a chance to respond, the guard turned and marched off down the hall.

"Good talk," Hain said, then moved to follow. "I guess I'll just take the rear. Make sure no one sneaks up on us from behind."

The guard said nothing as he led Hain through a labyrinth of identical looking corridors. The benches were full by the time Hain reached the gathered Foew, and their meeting was already in full swing. Hain started toward the stairs between the benches, but the guard stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"You stay here with me," the guard said. "Hume's orders."

Hain studied the guard's face for a moment before turning back to the meeting. If Hume thought keeping a guard nearby meant less chance of someone murdering him, then Hain was all for it.

The Foew carried their discussion in a language he didn't recognize, but their feelings became all too clear the longer he listened. Bickering was bickering no matter the tongue.

As the arguing went on, Hain's thoughts drifted to the information he'd gleaned from Sanger. There'd been some event–a plague or something similar, given Sanger's responses. And considering Sanger's reaction to Hain's intentionally mixing up the Vrai with the Foew, it was fairly clear that the Foew of Promise didn't simply dislike the Vrai. They loathed them.

The soft pad of footsteps snapped Hain from his thoughts, and he looked up to see Foew advancing up the sloping walls of the room. Hain turned a suspicious eye on each as they passed, and felt the hair on his neck stand on end as he did. Had one of them been the one to pull the trigger?

Hume still hadn't made his presence known when the last of the Foew emptied through the room's twin sets of doors. Hain turned around to speak to the guard, to ask him where Hume was, and felt the ground crumple beneath his stomach when he found guard was missing.

Hain turned in place, eyes scrambling over every inch of the room. The place was empty. He was alone.

A heavy thunk rang through the chamber, and Hain looked up just in time to see the room's only way in or out slam shut. Hain panicked, sprinting toward the doors and heaving at the handle.

Locked. The doors were locked, and he was stuck in a room completely by himself. The only way out.

Hain stopped, forcing himself to think through things. The door might have been the only way out, but that also meant no one could come in, including any would-be killers aiming for a second shot at him.

Just as this thought eased some of the tension in his neck, Hain caught the faint smell of ozone wafting through the air, and he knew he'd been wrong. He turned, slowly, and saw what he'd known would be there. An expanding gap of inky black opening over one of the marbled walls.

It was a portal. And someone, Hain realized, was coming through.