Rise of Cassian Vale: The Forbidden Healer

Chapter 6

Lucia's hand had found its way to her throat, her earlier bravado nowhere to be found.

Behind her, near the head table, Henry Rowan had gone the color of old ash, staring at the scattered bodies of his own security and the battered body of his son like he couldn't quite convince himself they were real.

Lucia's fear didn't last long. It never did, certainly not when there was an audience watching to see whether she'd fold.

She straightened, smoothing the front of her dress with hands that weren't quite steady, and forced her voice back into something imperious.

"Fifty thousand," she announced, loud enough for the whole room to hear. "Fifty thousand dollars, cash, to whoever puts this man on the ground before security arrives."

For a heartbeat nobody moved. Then greed did what fear couldn't. Three more men peeled off from the edges of the crowd, followed by two waiters who had clearly worked security details before, followed by a cluster of Henry Rowan's personal guard summoned from somewhere deeper in the house.

Twelve. Maybe fourteen, once they'd all converged.

*They keep sending more,* Cassian thought, watching them fan out around him with a strange, distant calm. *They still think this is a numbers problem.*

They came at him from every side at once, a coordinated wall of fists and batons that would have flattened an ordinary man in seconds.

Cassian moved like something poured rather than something running.

A baton swung for his head; he ducked under it and drove his palm into the wielder's sternum hard enough to lift the man off his feet.

A second attacker grabbed for his arm from behind but Cassian rotated his wrist free, caught the man's own arm, and used his momentum to send him crashing into the next person.

He caught a punch mid-air without appearing to look at it, twisted, and the owner of that fist dropped to his knees with a sound like a wounded animal.

Two more rushed him together. Cassian sidestepped, letting them collide with each other, and finished them both before they both could fully untangle. one strike hitting them each. It was precise and economical, like Cassian was trying not to waste any punch..

The guests who had pressed themselves against the walls to watch were no longer whispering. Some still held their phones out, filming with shaking hands. And some were just holding their breath.

Within thirty seconds, the last of Henry Rowan's hired men lay groaning across the marble, and Cassian stood at the center of it all without a single mark on him.

That was when Marcus made his move. During the fight, he had managed to stand up and using his last strength, he had circled wide during the chaos, unnoticed, drifting toward the corner where Nora still stood frozen against the wall. Now he closed the last few feet in a lunge, one arm hooking around her throat, hauling her back against him like a shield.

"That's far enough," Marcus said, breathing hard, his voice cracking under its own bravado. "Take one more step and I'll break her neck right here in front of everyone."

Nora made a small, terrified sound, her ruined hands scrabbling uselessly at his forearm.

The room's temperature seemed to drop another ten degrees.

"Please! Let me go!" She cried out, the fear evident on her face.

Cassian went very still but the anger still burned fiercely in his heart.

"Let her go, Marcus." Cassian warned.

"Or what?" Marcus's grip tightened, and Nora gasped. "You'll do what, exactly? You think I don't know what you are now? Some kind of freak they made in that prison? I don't care. I'll snap her neck before you cross half this room."

"Cassian, please, just do as he says, I don't want to die please!" Nora begged.

The sound of her begging made Cassian's blood to boil and he tightened his fists so hard that his fingers dug into his palm and almost drew blood.

"Nora, don't be afraid, I won't let this pig harm." Cassian assured her but her response came as a whimper as Marcus tightened his hand around her neck slightly, adding a little pressure.

"Stay back Cassian or your little birdie girlfriend dies!" Marcus warned.

His eyes had gone somewhere cold and quiet that Marcus clearly wasn't equipped to read.

"You had a choice a minute ago," Cassian said. "You still have one now. Let her go, and you keep both your arms tonight."

Marcus laughed, high and brittle. "You're not exactly in a position to—"

He never finished the sentence.

Cassian was simply there, closing the distance in a fraction of a second that shouldn't have been possible, and his hand closed around Marcus's wrist before Marcus's brain had caught up to what his eyes were seeing.

Marcus tried to tighten his grip on Nora's throat anyways but his hand wouldn't obey him. Cassian's fingers had locked his wrist in place like it had been set in stone.

"I told you," Cassian said quietly, "that you had a choice."

He twisted.

The crack echoed off the marble and the chandeliers alike. Marcus screamed, released Nora on reflex, and staggered backward clutching a wrist bent at an angle wrists were never meant to bend.

Cassian caught Nora before she could fall, lowering her gently to a nearby chair, his voice dropping into something almost unrecognizably soft after everything the room had just watched him do.

"You're safe. I've got you."

Nora stared up at him, tears cutting fresh tracks down her face, disbelief and something like hope warring in her expression. "Cassian... you came back."

"I should have found you years ago," he said. "That's on me. Not anymore."

Behind them, Henry Rowan had gone rigid with fury and fear in equal measure, his face bone-white as he watched his son collapse to his knees, cradling a shattered wrist.

"Someone get real security in here," Henry bellowed, spittle flying. "Not the house staff, no, call the company. Call everyone. I want this man on the ground before he leaves this building!"