PROMISE

CHAPTER 28

Lilith loomed over him, fists set against her hips. "How did you manage to get in a fight?"

"I don't know," Hain said from his place slumped against the corridor wall outside of Memory. "The traditional way?"

"Yes, but how?" she said. "I mean, you're just, I don't know–"

"Kind of a coward?" Hain said, though he wasn't sure he believed it.

Not anymore. This was the second time in a single day that he'd rushed toward danger rather than away from it.

"No," she said, and stared hard into his eyes. "What you did takes courage, Hain. "

"Thanks." Hain's cheeks glowed pink with the compliment. "But I'm willing to bet you'd do the same if Boothe came after you."

"Boothe?" she said. "The Vrai who broke you from the cells?"

He nodded.

"That's not possible." Doubt painted a frown over her face. "The Vrai can't get through the walls of Promise, much less pick a fight with you inside of it."

"Technically, I think it was a knife fight, though there was only one knife between the two of us. Do both parties need knives for it to qualify as a legitimate knife fight?"

"This isn't a time to joke."

"Who says I'm joking?" he said. "I can't just run around bragging to people about getting in a knife fight with a Vrai if it doesn't count as an actual knife fight."

"This is serious, Hain," she said. "I need to know this was actually a Vrai."

"Unless hand tattoos have become the hot new trend over the past three hours, I think its safe to say it was a Vrai."

Lilith's face went white. "You saw the tattoos?"

"It's hard not to see someone's hands when they're trying to crush your skull with them." He shoved an open hand toward her. "Now, a little help, please?"

Lilith stared at the hand as if she'd never seen one.

Hain lifted one eyebrow at her. "This is the part where you help me off the floor."

"Sorry." She locked one hand in his, and heaved him to his feet. "I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I don't understand why the Vrai are coming after you."

I can think of at least one reason, Hain thought, though he kept his voice firmly silent. Boothe had made his intentions known when he'd broken Hain from his cell. He'd wanted the ring. Though now, with Boothe's plan to get the ring thwarted, and Hain semi-safe within the haven proper, Hain wondered if Boothe had adopted murdering the ring's owner as a backup plan to taking it for himself.

Hain pushed all this from his mind as he tested weight on his injured foot, and was rewarded with pain lancing up his calf. Hain leaned back against the wall, his stomach roiling with nausea.

Lilith's hands were on his hips in a blink, steadying him. "Careful."

Hain's eyes fell to her hands, then back to her eyes. He raised an eyebrow.

"Is this your way of getting close to me, or are you just trying to make things as awkward as possible?"

"Shut up," Lilith said, but she jerked her hands away all the same. "I just didn't want you to fall."

"I'm not going to fall." Hain took a tentative step on the injured foot. It hurt only slightly less than it had the first time. "I'll be fine. Just give me a minute to walk it off."