Blade sobered. He looked at the fires too, particularly the one to the west, near the verwulfen ambassador’s house. “’E’ll get ’ere when ’e can, and all them verwulfen ’e’s got.”

Neither of them voiced the other option—that the prince consort’s forces would have hit there hard, knowing that Will was likely to come to Blade’s aid with dozens of the newly freed verwulfen. A single verwulfen in a berserker rage could cut through half an army by itself.

The image of Lena’s face flashed into Leo’s mind. His laughing sister; that was the way he’d always thought of her: the girl who smiled, even when she had nothing to smile about, because she lived to see others happy. She kept her pain private so as not to alarm anyone. Something he understood all too clearly, despite different methods. His own pain was hidden through indifference.

It ached inside him now. This was why they’d been so long in planning their offensive. People would die and neither he, Blade, Lynch, nor Garrett wanted to see familiar faces among the dead. If Lena was out there, she’d be by Will’s side, both the safest and most dangerous place to be at the moment.

She’d be safe. Will would die before he let anything happen to her. But the words didn’t sound as confident in Leo’s own head. War was brutal and violent and unforgiving. People died. People who shouldn’t have or people who should—there was little distinction.

“Blade!” A voice cut through the laughter and bellowing of the men on the wall.

Lark scrambled up beside them like a cat, her face pale. Blade’s spine straightened, his body locking tight. “’Onoria?”

“She’s lyin’ in.” Lark sounded nervous. “The duchess said you ought to come.”

“But it ain’t ’er time yet,” Blade blurted, panic tightening his features. He turned to Leo. “She were right, weren’t she? When you saw ’er last?”

Leo tried to think of something to say and Blade saw it. “Honor didn’t want to distract you,” he said.

“Bloody ’ell.”

Lark looked very small all of a sudden. “They won’t let me in, but I don’t… I don’t think it’s goin’ real well. I could ’ear ’er screamin’.”

If Blade had been pale before, it was as nothing compared to now. Leo caught his arm, holding him up. “Steady.”

“I can’t go,” Blade whispered, looking around. “I’ve got to ’old the wall. If they overrun us, they’ll burn us and she won’t ’ave a chance to escape.”

Leo tipped his chin up, catching Rip’s attention. Firelight leered over the man’s brutal face as he clapped someone on the back, then strolled closer with a nonchalant step. Despite that, tension tightened the fine lines around his eyes.

“Go and see to her,” Leo said. “Rip and I will hold the wall. Nothing’s going to happen anytime soon. Not yet. Morioch’s still playing cat-and-mouse.”

Blade clasped his arm, giving it a squeeze, the relief on his face palpable. “Thank you.”

Fifteen

Pacing outside the door, Mina felt every hair on her body lift. She was no longer alone.

The Devil of Whitechapel appeared at the top of the staircase, his face pale and his eyes as black as Hades. There was no sign of the man she’d seen earlier; this was a predator, tight with tension and the need to kill. Prepared to defend every inch of the place he called his own.

A muffled sound of pain echoed from inside the bedroom. Blade’s attention shifted, and for a moment, his face contorted. Not a blue blood, not a predator now, just a man listening to his wife cry out and completely helpless because of it.

“Lark said the baby’s coming,” he said, his words strangely lacking any hint of his usual accent.

Mina took a deep breath as he strode closer. “It’s not going well. The child’s in a breech position, and the midwife seems to feel that Honoria is too narrow through the hips to give birth successfully. However, if we don’t get the baby out soon…”

Those black eyes stared at her, then he scraped a trembling hand over his mouth. “No. No, this can’t be happening.”

Mina reached out and touched his arm. He tensed. “There is a chance we could perform a cesarean on her. Mrs. Parsons has performed such operations before and—”

“Cut it out of her? What about Honoria? What about—”

“We’ll use my blood to heal her wound. It will significantly lower the risk of scarring and infection, and I’ve already tested her to see if her vaccination will interfere with the craving virus’s ability to heal. It doesn’t.”

He looked lost. “Is there no other way?”

“None of us are obstetricians and we cannot wait to find one. I feel we must take this chance or lose it forever.”

Blade rubbed his mouth again, his gaze staring at something she couldn’t see. “And you want my approval?”

“Your approval,” Mina said, “and your help. Your wife is very frightened right now. With her scientific background, she knows too well the risk of this pregnancy. I know it’s hardly the done thing for a man to attend his wife, but if you could be there…to hold her hand, to talk to her and calm her fears—”

“I’ll do it.”

Thank goodness. She didn’t fully understand the relationship between Honoria and her husband, but he seemed to care very strongly for her, enough to overcome a man’s instinctive fear of the birthing room.

“Let’s do this then,” Blade said. “Before I lose me nerve.”

“Wait.” She caught his arm. “How is the battle faring?”

A dangerous look from those green eyes. “You ain’t about to be rescued, princess. Barrons and Rip are ’oldin’ the wall. Morioch’s only playin’ with us for now.”

The familiar sound of his accent let her breathe a little easier. There was something entirely too intense about him when his inner demon held sway. A sense of…danger.

“Barrons,” she murmured, her mind flashing to the hints of fire she’d seen in the distance and the sounds of shouting. He’d be right at the forefront of the fighting, no doubt. For a moment, she felt ill.

“Well, I’ll be damned…” he murmured. “Barrons?”