Page 108 of Silver & Gold

Seth gripped his arms. “Goddamn it, Raider, that’s not the point. Let someone else do this. All of the Hammer and the Hand are looking for Kahzir. You don’t always have to be the one protecting everyone else.”

“I don’t think they can find him. But I think I can. If I go back to the beginning. If I retrace my steps. And it is the point. I will heal. That’s what you see in my eyes. That I know I have to do this. That I know I can. That I know I’ll come back from it—because I have you.”

Seth grabbed Raider into his arms, nearly crushing him. “You better fucking believe it.”

***

Raider started exactly where Seth thought he would. In that damn hallway with the bas-relief. Right where he’d lost it that night.

Seth stayed back, out of sight around a corner, but he was there. He could reach Raider in seconds if he needed him. So Raider was alone but not really.

Raider stood in front of that bas-relief for a good twenty minutes. He kept touching a particular spot. When the quicksilver threaded down from his shoulder—his right shoulder—Seth almost came out of concealment. He made himself hold back, made himself wait and trust Raider.

The quicksilver formed a blade in Raider’s right hand. He extended it forward, and its tip went into the wall in the spot he’d been touching.

When the quicksilver retracted, Raider turned away from the bas-relief. He walked down the hallway, away from Seth, and turned a corner.

Seth followed him.

Hallway after hallway.

Raider kept backtracking. Retracing a step. Thinking. Remembering.

Seth kept waiting for them to reach an exit, to go out into Kastari. But they stayed in the palace.

They went down to the lowest levels.

At the end of a dark, unused hallway, they came to the exit that Seth had been waiting for. But, clearly, it didn’t lead outside.

Raider was about to walk straight through, and that was when Seth had enough.

He hurried after Raider, catching up to him in the dark doorway. He expected Raider to turn on him, to attack. But when Raider spun at Seth’s approach, he gasped like he was coming up from underwater—and he flung his arms around Seth.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me,” Raider whispered fiercely.

“Never. You hear me? Never.”

“I found it. The way. I remembered. This is the catacombs. This is why they can’t find Kahzir in the city. Because he isn’t in the city. He never left the palace. This is how he abducted me so easily, and this is how I was able to get back in to kill Hassan. Because, in all that time, I never left the palace.”

“Fuck, baby—gods. You did good, really good, but this is far enough, okay? Let’s go back and make a plan and get help.”

“Yeah,” Raider breathed in obvious relief. “Okay. Let’s go back.”

“Oh,” purred a voice from the shadows of the catacombs. “I do not think so.”

CHAPTER 33

THAT VOICE REACHED straight into Raider like it grabbed his bones. It froze him utterly.

He’d known he might hear it.

He’d known he might see the doubly familiar form that stepped from the catacombs into the dimly lit hallway.

Arrogant. Hawk nosed. Thin lipped. Dark eyed.

That face had loomed over him with a scalpel.

That face had loomed over him in bed.