The Fire King by Marjorie M. Liu Page A

spoke to Soria, sharply. Karr did not like his tone, or him. Too cold. There was something ancient in his eyes.
    Soria ignored him and dropped down on her knees beside Karr. “Your name.”
    He did not want to tell her, but he remembered her standing between him and the men with their weapons, attacking with nothing but her bare hand, and a swell of dangerous admiration filled him. “Karr,” he said.
    “Karr.” Soria held his gaze a moment longer, then fumbled for the bolts binding his iron restraints. “You show me what you are made of. Good or bad.”
    I will show you both,
he thought wearily.
And hope I do not kill you.

Chapter Four
    It was hard to breathe. Hard to think, hard to sit up. Hard to undo the bolts in the iron restraints. Soria worked fast, phantom pain shooting up her ghost arm, making her shoulder and head throb. They hurt like hell. So did her ribs.
    Having an eyeful of bleeding corpses did not help, either. Feeling her hand sticky with some of that same blood was worse. That she had been attacked at all, with a gunfight still going on—
    “Fuck,” she muttered, encountering a particularly stubborn bolt. It was the restraint that bound Karr’s wrist. She had managed to undo the ones holding down his throat, chest, and waist. It would have made more sense to start first with his hands so that he could help her, but she had put those off until now, part of her still wondering if this was a good idea. Giving herself time to change her mind.
    She had seen the videos—this man had practically taken off heads with his bare hands—and here she was, undoing his restraints. She had come here to judge him, to discover if he was a danger. And he was. He most certainly was. But the question remained whether or not he was a danger to
everyone.
    There was no easy distinction between a “right” killing and a “wrong” one. Death was death; only the circumstances and intent made it different. Was Soria qualified to judge? Maybe. But the reason for that was not something Soria wanted to think about. Not with fresh blood on her hand, which was far more disturbing and revolting than she could afford to let on. It brought back bad memories. If there had been any more blood on her body, she was quite certain she would not still be conscious.
    She struggled with the bolt again, and felt Karr watching her. She could see his golden eyes beneath her lashes; steady, unflinching, restless. His was a dangerous gaze, utterly inhuman. Just like the rest of him, still covered in rippling patches of golden scales, each one the size of her palm, and iridescent as some sun-riddled desert pearl. His skin resembled metal or shell more than flesh.
    His face, too, had not yet regained its humanity: his jaw was long and pointed, his upper teeth sharp. This was less affecting to Soria than seeing him free of the mask for the first time, filthy, sweating, startled. So human. He had been fed with an eyedropper, but the food had clearly missed his mouth for part of the time, and a crusty film still remained on his face. All this only made him appear wilder, even more unpredictable.
    You’re risking lives on a theory,
Soria told herself angrily. But she had run out of time to talk with this man. Nor was she going to leave him here to die or be experimented on. Even if it killed her.
    She bit her bottom lip as her left hand—still weak after all this time—refused to turn the bolt. “Robert,” she called over her shoulder. “I need help.”
    Robert. In his fine linen suit, looking as though he had stepped directly from the cover of
GQ,
straight into the firefight. Cool, calm, utterly unbothered by the violence. And Ku-Ku, standing guard in the hall, wearing mini-shorts and a pink tank top, chewing gum, holding a knife and semiautomatic in her hands.
    Soria was going to kick Roland’s ass. Oh, God, was she going to throttle him.
    “You should leave the shifter,” said Robert smoothly. But a moment later he appeared at her side,