by Bec McMaster
“He can try. I don’t think she’ll appreciate that.”
“As long as the truth comes out.”
“Well, that’s where you have to play your role,” I point out.
She rolls her eyes and stalks toward the door. “Where the fuck are my flowers? If I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do it right.”
Anissa grabs the bunch of night-blooming lilies and hands them to her.
“You breathe a word of this,” Belladonna tells me, “and I’ll ruin you. I can curse you again just as easily as breathing.”
I roll my eyes, but Anissa pokes her in the ribs. “Bella!”
“Thank you,” Belladonna says stiffly.
The last thing I see is the excited flash of Anissa’s smile. In her eyes, once Malechus dies, they’re finally free to live their lives the way they choose. No more political marriages bound to separate them. Without Malechus trying to drive a wedge between them, they may love each other openly.
The second they’re gone, I breathe a sigh of relief and allow myself a moment to lean back against the wall.
The first part of the plan succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.
Now Belladonna needs to make her entrance and make it clear she had nothing to do with the attempted assassination. She’ll be shocked. Speechless. Then furious as she demands to know who this imposter is.
The fun begins when she realizes I’m the one using her as a pawn—and not the other way around.
Phase two of the plan needs to be set in place.
I have a horn to find.
A fae lord to revive.
And then a sister’s rage to quell.
Soraya is going to kill me once she realizes what I’d failed to mention.
After all, the ceremony wasn’t fake. Not even I dare circumvent something while the goddess is watching, and it doesn’t matter what names they gave if their blood is bound.
Mistmark just found himself married to the wrong woman.
22
Soraya
“Let go of me!” My skirts hiss around my legs as the prince of the Court of Blood drags me into a side chamber.
Malechus shoves me through the door and slams it behind him, locking us away from the curious guests. “Are you out of your mind? What have you done? You’ve cost us everything!”
“Cost you,” I point out, taking a step away from his towering rage.
“Cost us,” he hisses, advancing upon me. “Cost this entire fucking court. We cannot afford to go to war with Mistmark. I gave my word to Angmar of the Court of Storms that nothing would go awry. And now the fucking Lord of Mistmark is dying! His fae will arm themselves for war, and that frigid fucking wraith he has up his sleeve will come after me!”
I can’t help myself. “Ooops.”
He freezes. “What did you say?”
I shrug. Sometimes it’s best not to say anything at all. Besides, if I wasted my breath on words, I wouldn’t be able to sit back and watch a thousand furious emotions dance across his face.
And then his expression stills, his rage sliding off him like he’s locked it away. “You don’t care. You knew the risks associated with this—that Anissa would pay the price of your insubordination. But you don’t care.”
What can I say? That my cold dead wraithen heart would bleed for the two lovers—soon to be torn apart—but it turned to ice so long ago it barely beats anymore.
“But my cousin would care,” Malechus says, and suddenly he’s a hound on the scent of its prey. “Belladonna would die for Anissa. She would prostrate herself at my feet if it meant she could stop me from cutting her lover’s heart out of her chest.”
He’s figured it out.
Now to lure him closer.
“She would,” I purr.
“Who are you?” he demands, his dark eyes glittering as he snatches at my upper arm. “For you’re not my cousin.”
I let the glamor I’ve been holding dissolve, and it feels like I step out of Belladonna’s skin. The discarded glamor settles around my ankles like a shed snake skin, before it wisps into nothingness. “You’re right. I’m not. Remember me?”
Oh, this moment feels good.
His eyes widen even as I summon my dirk. The goblin-forged metal materializes in my hand, and before Malechus can recover from his shock, I drive it into his side. Right between the fourth and fifth ribs.
It’s the best way to a man’s heart, after all.
And it takes care of any nasty surprises like blood curses. They’re difficult to conjure when you’re trying to stop your arteries from gushing like a scarlet fountain.
His fingers dig into my arm, and we both go to our knees in a semblance of an embrace.
“Do you remember when you put me in that sarcophagus?” I whisper, caressing his face. “And I promised I would make you pay?”
“How… did you…?”
“Get free?” I purr. “I had a little help from an old friend.”
Malechus’s fingers snatch at the gossamer of my skirts. From the wheeze hissing between his ribs, it sounds like I might have hit a lung. Excellent. I slide the dirk free, and trail my bloody fingers over his lips.
“Shhh,” I whisper. “This won’t take long.”
Rage ignites in his eyes. He coughs blood. Definitely a lung.
I kiss him, painting the poison across his mouth—just in case he actually can heal the knife wound—and then I ease to my feet.
“I’d stay to watch, really I would, but I have a certain sleeping beauty to wake.” Grabbing a fistful of my skirts, careless of the bloody knife, I step over him as he slumps to the floor. “Do be a good little prince and die.”
I stalk out into the amphitheater just as Belladonna appears at the head of the aisle.
Perfect.
Her mouth drops open when she sees me and then her flowers fall at her feet. “Who are you?” she demands. Loudly. Half the guests crane their neck to look. “What is going on here?” Her gaze falls upon the dais, where half a dozen solemn fae stand around waiting. They took Mistmark elsewhere, sending desperately for a medic.
“Sorry, my lady.” I blow her a bloody kiss. “But I had a prior engagement with the groom.”
The entire hall falls into shocked silence as heads swing between the two of us.
“What’s going on here?” someone demands.
“Imposter!” Belladonna screeches, and I can’t help thinking she’s enjoying this a little too much.
With a wink, I throw myself into the crowd. Ladies screech as I trample through them, and someone calls out behind me, “Stop her! She’s an assassin!”
I don’t have my sister’s skill at parting shadows, but I have a few little gifts of my own. As I lunge between two ladies, I catch a glimpse of a fae lord’s face and then am wearing it myself, even as an illusion of his blue cloak spills from my shoulders. The illusion of the red dress hits the floor behind me like a second skin. My skirts vanish, encasing my legs in tight leather trousers. Perfect. All the better to kick a man’s head off his neck.
Fae yell and grab at the dress, and it’s only as I finally find the edge of the guests that I glance back to see them fighting over the torn fabric, arguing about what happened to the assassin. It shreds apart in their hands, turning to wisps of insubstantial smoke.
Guests whisper and gasp. Some are crying. It’s a crush of braying donkeys begging for the slaughter, and I’m forced to become a little generous with my elbows to make my way out of the crush.
Fools. Ducking into the shadows that line the columns, I head for the chamber where I saw them taking Mistmark’s body.
Time is ticking out.
I had ten minutes from the moment I kissed him, and right now I have to guess that only three minutes remain. Malechus dragging me into that antechamber cost me precious time I don’t have.
Even if I can always make a little time for murder.
A guard steps forward to stop me as I enter the cavern that leads toward the lord who is dying.
“Here, you. You can’t go back there—”
I grab the wrist of the hand that reaches for me and twirl beneath it, driving my dirk up into his armpit. Axillary artery. My favorite. Close enough to the heart to leak a few decent pints. Nobody ever thinks to protect themselves there and a single slice can make a man bleed out in a few minutes.
As he hits the ground, I flip my dirk and keep walking. It’s almost tempting to hum.
Blood spatters lie on the floor, and I track them.
Blood that Mistmark no doubt coughed from his lungs as they carried him away from the amphitheater. I track it toward a set of doors, but even if I hadn’t seen the blood, the four fae standing guard would have told me this is where they took him.
Four Blood Court guards. Not particularly great odds, but hardly something that will stop me.
The captain snaps to attention when she sees me. “Here, you. What are you doing—?”
“Do they train you with such language?” I chide, as I stalk toward her. “‘Here, you?’ That’s the best you can offer?” The handle of the dirk flips into my hand as I mock her. “And what am I doing? I’m here to save the day, don’t you know?”
She reaches for her sword, but I’m in and under her guard before she can blink. I have a particular respect for females who’ve reached the pinnacle of their male-dominated careers, so I merely spin beneath the sweep of her sword and slice across her Achilles. She’ll thank me later. Maybe.
As she goes down with a scream, I drive my elbow into the back of her head and then lunge up, burying the dirk in the belly of the next guard. Right between the rings in his chain mail.
It’s why I like the dirk so much. It’s such a thin, delicate weapon, and when you’re facing guards armed with swords, they’re always terribly smug about the fact they have an extra sixteen or eighteen inches on me.
The problem is, those extra inches are a liability in close quarters.
I grab the guard’s collar and yank him closer, making sure I skewer his liver, before I spin him to take the strike of his fellow guardsman. The sword glances off his chainmail—there has to be some use for it, after all—and then I kick him in the chest.
They both go down with a clatter, like turtles on their backs.
And I face the last guard.
This one is no fool.
He held back while the others attacked and he crouches low, his spear held in steady hands. “Thou shalt not pass.”
Oh, we have Mr. Determined here.
I spin my dirk between my fingers and grin. Suddenly, there are two of them, one in each hand.
His gaze flickers down, focusing on the spinning knives, but I’m already slipping my skin. I put the dirk through his throat and the image behind me—a grinning young woman with two knives twirling—vanishes in a puff of smoke.
“Never even saw it coming,” I whisper in his ear as the light goes out of his eyes.
Glamor. The next best thing to an entire arsenal of goblin-forged blades. Too many of the fae focus on what they can see.
And if there’s one thing that growing up with my sister taught me, it’s that being able to “vanish” into thin air is a powerful weapon.
I step through the doors, sheathing the knife.
The room is quiet. Still.
There’s a marble slab in the center of it and someone’s laid the Lord of Mistmark there in quiet repose.
The sight of Alaric lying so still is a shock that makes my feet slow. He’s always seemed so energetic to me; a whirlwind of determination that would stop at nothing and no one. I’ve fought with him, kissed him, tried to kill him…. And every time we’ve clashed, he’s been the one in control.
Now he looks like he’s sleeping.
It takes me right back to that first night I crept within his chambers, intent upon murdering him. He was so beautiful that I hesitated for a moment, and that hesitation cost me. Just as I summoned my goblin blade, he suddenly woke, grabbing my wrist.
It even feels like that night again—like fate is going to reach out and kick me in the teeth—though the weight in my chest is different.
I could let him die.
I could let this entire twisted knot that binds us together die.
All I have to do is tell Zemira I was too slow to bring him the antidote.
He’d be gone from my life. I’d never lie awake again, twisted in knots as I fight the urge to go to him. I’ll never wake from dreams where his name is on my lips even as I can still feel his tongue between my thighs. The scars on my body—the ones my father graced me with when I returned from my assassination attempt in failure—will fade.
There’ll be no more shame.
No more fear.
No more desperate yearning that wakes me at nights.
I’ll never see those blazing eyes lock upon me across a room again until everything around us fades.
“Just you and me, little wraith,” comes the whispered memory of his voice. “Forever.”
And any chance I ever had of escaping his hold over me vanishes.
Curse him.
Alaric doesn’t move. He’s barely even breathing.
The poison must be working through his system even faster than I could have imagined.
It spurs me to action.
“Don’t think you’re escaping me so easily,” I whisper as I slide to my knees beside the stone bier he’s lying on. “You still owe me a reckoning.”
Where the fuck are the healers? Surely they didn’t just leave him here to die?
It’s not as though they would have been able to do anything against the poison he ingested when he licked my lying little lips, but if he dies in Malechus’s court, there will be an accounting.
Two minutes left, at best.
I kneel by his side, and for some ridiculous reason my heart hammers in my chest.
I can’t help thinking of the way he kissed me that long-ago summer.
Every day I’d promised to kill him, and every day he’d simply laughed and said, “No, you won’t.”
And I hadn’t. I hadn’t been able to.
It’s the one time my knife has hesitated, the one time I’ve failed. It cost me more than he will ever know.
It cost me my heart.
My cruel, treacherous heart.
“Curse you,” I whisper as I run my tongue over my teeth, searching for the capped one. I break the tiny glass vial embedded there, and as the antidote floods my mouth, I lean down and kiss him.
Shoving my tongue into his mouth, I force the antidote within him. Tiny shards of glass cut my lips until I can taste my own blood. Taste his mouth. Taste him.
One single stolen kiss.
It reminds me of so many others. It reminds me of everything I forced myself to forget.
A hand suddenly sinks into my hair, and then I gasp as Mistmark wakes beneath me, sucking in a huge breath.
I jerk back, patting his cheek. He’s alive. I wasn’t too late.
But as his lashes flutter against his cheeks, I know I have to get out of here. He cannot discover I was here.
I barely escaped him last time.
A hand catches at mine as I turn to flee. “Sora?” His glazed eyes search for me.
He shouldn’t be able to sense me.
Once again, that fucking inexplicable bond between us has bound me in place.
“I thought… you tried… to kill me…?” His vision finally seems to focus upon my face.
My heart skips another beat as a thousand emotions wage war within me. “I did,” I whisper, and then, unable to help myself, I lower my face to his, stealing another kiss from his cold mouth.
One last desperate taste of him before I vanish.
He’s fading as I come up for air, his eyes rolling back in his head. The antidote will take several minutes to work its magic, and he’ll be weakened for weeks. It was the best I could come up with when Zemira first worked over this plan with me.
This poison is an inevitable death once ingested.
/> But the recovery is swift, and the consequences few.
As much as I want to kill him, I don’t actually want to hurt him.
He’s got you twisted in so many knots, you don’t even know yourself.
Cupping my palm over his eyes, I slowly close them. Maybe he’ll remember me. Maybe he won’t. But I can’t just leave without saying goodbye. “Sleep well, my lord.”
And then I steel myself and push to my feet, turning toward the doors.
Except I’m no longer alone.
“I wondered what you would do,” Falion says, leaning against them and watching me from beneath his silvery lashes.
Mistmark’s assassin.
The one I never knew about until it was too late.
I freeze in my tracks.
Of course. No wonder there were no healers. Only this faithful dog, waiting at his master’s heels to see how the game would play out.
I’ve never quite understood the bond between them.
“What I would do?” I lick away the blood. “Have you been watching me again?” I force a laugh. “The same way you watched me then? Tell me, Falion. Do you ever step out of the shadows? Or do you simply enjoy peeking through windows when nobody knows you’re there?”
There’s no sign I scored a point. He tugs one glove off as he steps forward into the light. “I enjoyed watching you stab Malechus. I was about to cut your throat myself, except you didn’t run for the exit, you made straight for this room. I’d smelled the poison on your breath and knew you had to have the antidote on you somewhere. You had to take it yourself, of course, before you could paint it across your lips….”
“Somewhat presumptuous.” I summon a small pouch of powder into my hands, curling my fingers around it even as I wave the point of my knife at him. Look at the knife, go on…. Just focus on the knife…. “I’ve been sipping miroire for years in order to acquire a certain immunity. It’s my favorite. The kiss of death…. Nobody ever sees it coming, and most males are too fucking stupid to look beyond what I’m offering them.”
“Not this one,” he whispers, and as our eyes meet, I know he’s about to repay everything I did to Mistmark that long ago summer.
