To Love and To Perish (Deathly Beloved #4)

One

- Evangeline

“I’ve always been a fan of murder,” I said as I toyed with a toothpick in between my fingers. “Some people just really need to die.” I nodded at the man – well, the boy in front of me as I twirled the little wooden weapon, keeping my eyes on his green horror-struck gaze. “Rapists, animal abusers, unsexy mobsters, greedy monopolists, those thick enough to need warning labels to live, or –” My eyes widened as I gasped and slapped the counter of makeshift weapons between us.

“Gods! Those who use people scissors to cut up paper. Those sick fuckers need to be stabbed, skinned, fucked to death by a yondu, and then set on fire. Do you know how awkward it gets when you’re mid-torture and you go to pull out your people scissors, only for the damn things not to work because some asshat dulled them on paper?” Raising my free hand, I made snipping motions on my forearm as I scoffed and shook my head. Then I looked back at him. “Cue awkward eye contact.”

The toothpick whirled fast, a near blur of lethality as I snorted. “And then there are those who put the cereal in before the milk, the psychos that hoover before they mop, the servers who never give me enough salt. That’s the worst.” I held his wide glistening gaze for a long hard second before cocking my head to the side and chuckling softly. “My siblings call me anti-social, but that isn’t true at all. I love people.”

My smile stretched. “When they die.”

I twirled the toothpick faster. “Preferably by my own hands.”

I snorted with glee. “Which was why I went on active duty at eleven.” That was the earliest one could fight on the front lines of our great army with signed parental permission. As with everyone, I had begun my training at two. Even the baby boy in front of me would know a few moves, though I doubted he’d seen war yet. Twenty, thirty years ago, you were lucky to make it to seventeen – the age I was assuming he was – having been drafted at fifteen, but a few years ago, King Morningstar had raised the drafting age to twenty-two, and then a few weeks ago, Queen Morningstar had made that the age of adulthood.

For the first time in centuries, our population was booming rather than just holding steady now that we were popping out babies faster than they were dying.

“You see, it was getting a bit hard for my family to hide all the bodies,” I clarified. “And my mother started looking at me funny, which is really funny if you know she’s a war hero due to killing a lot of people. But at least on the battlefield, it’s acceptable to just leave your kills where they are.”

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. “But oh my gods, if you leave one body on the kitchen table, suddenly they all start losing their shit.”

My voice rising to the pitch of my older sister, I said, “You shouldn’t have killed him, Evangeline.”

It deepened to my brother’s. “He’s a fucking noble, Evangeline.”

It turned to ice like my mum’s. “Why does he have two carrots shoved into his eyes, Evangeline?”

“My answer of, ‘To help him see better, Mother,’ had got me a smack across the face and immediate enrolment the next morning.”

I laughed. “I mean, that was just a reward for me, really.”

The boy’s mouth opened and closed. Finally managing to say something, he uttered, “Ma’am, I just need to know if you want onion rings or chips with your burger.”

Oh yeah.

My eyes lifted to the chalkboard menu hanging on the wall, then skirted over to the clock to the left of it. fifteen. Any moment now and Richard the Head of the Crawliqa Gang would be arriving for his afternoon –

Ding.

The door of the restaurant opened behind me.

The toothpick stilled in my fingers.

Smiling, I placed the little weapon down on the counter and picked up the metal napkin dispenser. “I’ll take the chips. Extra salt.” My voice didn’t change in tone – light, airy, relaxed.

Yet, still, the boy’s throat worked as his eyes dipped to my hands, then flew over my shoulder. Clever lad. I was about to kill his boss for being a scummy gang leader whose file had had the misfortune of landing across my desk.

“Why don’t you go tell the chef what I ordered,” I said softly. Although I had killed children much younger than him, although I had been much younger than him when I had killed my hundredth person, the childhood of my generation being a lot rougher than his, I didn’t want him here for this.

He was responsible for getting my order to the chef correctly, and if he had a mental breakdown watching me kill someone he knew, then I would have to convey it to the chef myself, and the chef really didn’t like me because last week he’d caught me painting the wall of his house with a very detailed, brightly coloured vagina wearing a hat.

He’d called me a cunt the day before.

In all honesty, though, I’d deserved that given I’d killed his wife, but you know, manners and all that.

So if I went back there, the chef would probably attack me and I’d end up with a lot of fucking paperwork and no lunch. Then I would kill the kid, laws be damned because nicely dealing with my frustration was not one of the things my mother had taught me.

And then there would be more paperwork.

And just the thought of all that was making me feral.

Turning to my target, I picked the toothpick back up and smiled brightly. Tossing the napkin dispenser in the air, my eyes landed on the kid’s boss as the metal landed back in my hand. My fingers tightened over it. The entire restaurant quieted into heavy silence.

woman sitting on her own sighed and picked up her plate. Moving to a dark corner, she sat back down and resumed eating. The scrape of her fork made my stomach growl, and I glanced over at her and waved. Her eyes narrowed on me. She did not wave back.

What a cunt.

I was totally stealing her lu–

Shifting on my feet, I dodged the throwing knife that had been flung in my direction.

“What the fuck?” I asked as I turned back to Richard the Head of the Crawliqa Gang. “I haven’t even attacked you yet. You don’t even know if I’m here for you.”

As the head of FI-9, the organisation tasked with protecting the kingdom of Raza from any and all threats, I went after a lot of people. Three of my targets were in this very neighbourhood. In fact, my next victim was currently getting her hair cut at the salon two doors down. I figured I’d let her die pretty given she’d given me a huge discount on my knife set last week. It was a shame I had to kill her; she was really nice.

But my duty was to protect the crown, and she was selling unregistered wands on the black market.

The man pulled out another knife, this one nearly the size of my arm as he stepped all the way in and closed the door. The lock clicked behind him. Ohhh, I was so scared.

“Here for me?” His brows slunk towards each other. “You’re the one with a bounty on your head,” he said, the slight confusion on his face melting completely under the greed radiating out of his eyes. He swung his knife as he took a step forward. “ that’ll make me very wealthy.”

I chuckled, really wanting to tell him I had put the bounty on myself using one of my many other aliases because I couldn’t be bothered chasing his gang down. Putting a bounty on my head and then going into their known establishment and lingering would bring them to me. And it had worked like a prostitute faking an orgasm. Thank gods.

The Crawliqas were set up in a godsawful corner of Dizon known as the Perfume Markets, using it to hide the smell of their own drug making. Just stepping into that helhole made me feel icky, and I’d once willingly bathed in shit. Literal shit. And still, that had been a much more pleasant experience than choking on dozens of perfumes puffed in my face every three seconds.

Instead, I merely glanced over at the chick eating and shook my head. The bitch still glared at me, but there was a knowledge in her eyes that made me smile. She’d bet on me, I knew it. Maybe I’d take her number rather than her lunch…

Twirling the toothpick in my fingers, I looked back at my target. “And you’re not the slightest bit worried about why someone as small as me has a bounty that big?”

He was three times my size and probably at least four times my weight – all of it muscle. His knife was also a hel of a lot bigger than my toothpick. It looked a lot more menacing than my napkin dispenser too to the untrained eye.

He stopped, and I smiled sweetly as I waited for him to get it. “You’re a witch.”

Suddenly, he didn’t look so confident anymore, making my day. I hated fighting the dumb ones. It was never much of a fight, and I never got a sense of achievement from slaughtering through a bunch of noobs. Putting the toothpick in my mouth, I rolled up the sleeve of my other arm, revealing the brand of tattoos painting my skin. Unlike most witches, I didn’t just have runes on my body to help me focus my magic or to make my spellcasting quicker (like having certain spells on speed dial). Instead, I had pretty pictures of snakes, skulls, gravestones, things like that with runes hidden inside them.

I didn’t need to be stingy with the coverage of my skin because one, I was powerful enough without the extra help, and two, my magic came more from curses rather than traditional spells.

His face paled as he realised not just how strong I actually was despite my not-much-below-average, twelve-and-a-half-centimetres frame but who I was.

For there was only one Razian witch with tattoos like mine: Evangeline fucking Sinclair.

The head of Raza’s fairy intelligence.

The boogyman to the boogymen.

The ‘completely deranged’ woman even her friends feared.

Which was just rude to say given I was missing a leg. I couldn’t be ‘completely’ anything anymore. I could only be like seventy-five, eighty percent something.

My head cocked to the side. Does a leg make up that much?

“Hey, while we’re on the subject,” I said to Richard. “How much do you weigh?” Although his muscle mass was different to mine, I was pretty certain cutting off his leg and then weighing him would give me a rough ratio of myself. After all, we were both fairies.

“Why don’t you come over here and find out?” he sneered, pulling out a second knife just as big as the one he already held. He swivelled them both in his hands. The arc of the metal made me smile. My eyes latched onto the multi-coloured blades that were curved more for slicing rather than stabbing. I loved a good stabbing, but slicing was fun too, and oh my gods, those knives were so pretty. I could not wait to get close enough to really look at them.

Bouncing on my toes, I tossed the napkin dispenser back in the air, excitement pooling in my veins.

But I couldn’t attack yet. I needed to keep stalling, to give the server boy time to slip out the back and warn the rest of Richard’s gang. Although not a fan of his uncle’s violence, the boy didn’t have any other family – the rest having been killed in the various wars the kingdom was involved in.

You should save him. It was a feminine voice speaking inside my mind, but it wasn’t mine. It was a dear friend’s. A dead dear friend’s whose voice I would only ever hear again in the fractured parts of my soul.

Catching the dispenser, I yearned to see her face again. To hear her laugh. For real. Not in my head.

But that was the thing with death. You couldn’t barter with it. You couldn’t visit it. Sometimes, you could bring people back through necromancy, but for most, it was just that.

Over.

Done.

Forgotten.

Aurelia had been these people’s princess once, their rightful queen, and now she was nothing but a crazy person’s second personality.

He isn’t my problem. I spat the toothpick out, spat her free of my thoughts. I didn’t like talking to her when I was about to kill someone. She was always so, ‘Think about their families, Evangeline.’ And then I would think about their families...

And then I would end up killing them too, so they didn’t end up seeking revenge – as you did.

But for some reason, that really set Aurelia off with the whole trying to guilt me thing.

And it just got exhausting.

Fuck. Now I was thinking about Richard’s family…

Which was the boy.

Death is a type of help, right? I thought. I mean, if you think about it, it’s really just a reset button with the whole reincarnation thing…

Evangeline.

I rolled my eyes, but a smile tugged at my lips. She’d used that don’t-you-dare tone with me so often when she’d been alive.

“I’m going to slice that smirk right off your –”

The timer on my belt went off, vibrating against my skin in a silent alarm, and I held up a finger to Richard as I reached down to turn it off. Go time.

As I looked back up, a wicked smile curved my lips. Dashing forward, I threw the napkin dispenser at the middle of his chest. He swiped a blade at it, the metal tink of the two objects meeting my ears just as I dropped into a slide between his legs. Reaching an arm up as I came out behind him, I grabbed hold of his leather waistband and yanked down as I kept sliding. The band wrapped around his knees just as he twisted to slice at me.

Rising to my feet, I leaned backward, outside of the arc of metal, and lifted a hand to finger-wave at him. His wasp-like wings snapped out in a useless attempt to stop himself from crashing to the floor, but he was too twisted, too tangled, and he fell with a hard thump.

Laughing, I jumped on top of his chest. He swung for me, his knives aiming for my neck. Not a touch of worry filled me as I jabbed a hand forward and carefully gouged my fingers into the crammed sockets of his eyes, sliding in above his orbs.

Howling, he dropped his arms, the knives missing me by a mere breath. tip skinned along my side as it fell, but I didn’t flinch. Didn’t move from my position on his chest.

The door would be opening behind me any second now with his reinforcements.

And I didn’t want to damage Richard’s eyes. He had such pretty eyes.

Carefully curling my fingers down behind the back of them, I cupped them gently and then pulled free. They were still attached by the optic nerves and thus deformed in my hand, pulled back by their connection to his body. I loved this part of the process, that moment the world stilled as I waited for the beautiful snap of the nerves. That moment where they stopped being his and became mine.

Snap.

Shivering with delight, I turned my hand over and rolled his beautiful eyes until they stared up at me from my palm.

The bell over the door behind me dinged.

Grabbing the knife out of Richard’s left hand, I jumped to my feet and turned. Six women crowded the door of the restaurant, their eyes –such pretty eyes– bugging out of their skulls as they looked first at their boss howling between my heels, then up to me, holding his pretty blue eyes.

Too bad they weren’t purple.

Weren’t the violet colour that haunted my dreams.

Weren’t the colour of the real Richard I named all my targets after.

Richard Fucking Morningstar.

The King of Raza, the feared tyrant, “The Demon” – the man responsible for killing my best friend.

The man I was sworn to protect.

You should forgive him, Aurelia said. I wanted to die…

You didn’t know what you wanted. You were a child, I spat.

We all were.

But I wasn’t now.

I was an adult – whatever that really meant. Twenty years ago, that would’ve been any fairy over thirteen, around the time most hit their ascension – that moment their bodies were able to magically heal themselves. Now it was anyone over twenty-two, considering we didn’t need as many soldiers these days.

But they were both just numbers.

Just artificial stamps that belied a maturity adults didn’t really have.

Case in point. I was holding some man’s eyes like they were treasures collected off the forest floor, talking to a woman long dead, unable to move on, and here I was approaching forty.

Ha.

Looking at the women as they slowly stepped inside and fanned in front of the door, their drawn weapons (four knives, two wands) already up and aiming at me, I smiled, my eyes tracking each of their faces. All of their files had landed across my desk. I knew all their secrets, and none of them worried me.

Lifting Richard’s knife, which wasn’t as balanced as I’d been hoping it would be –ugh, homemade knives always let you down– I pointed at the third woman on the right. “Wanna trade?” I asked, holding up her boss’ eyes while gesturing to her own.

Her face twisted first in fear, then in rage.

But none of them moved from their wary positions. Blind loyalty, it seemed, wasn’t something they believed in. I grinned.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said to the women. “I’ll give you back his eyes to get reattached to his face if you just tell me where tonight’s deal is taking place.”

The Crawliqa Gang was irrelevant on the scheme of things. They were just the weakest link. The one I needed to cripple in order to get the information I needed to keep this kingdom safe. My real target was the gang they were meeting with tonight – the one trying to get into bed with our southern enemies – the dreaded Alzans.

Also, Richard was just a dick, and my therapist was always telling me not to give dicks power over me.

So here I was following his advice, making this dick powerless.

I ground my heel into his other socket.

Ah, therapy. I’d been skeptical of it at the start, but I had to admit, a lot of the advice I’d been given was pretty solid.

“They’ll kill us.”

“Um, hello?” I said, raising their boss’ eyes. “Do you not see these?” Dangling them by their bloody nerves, I shook them. They swung back and forth like a cute little pendulum. Ah, yes. That is it!

My daughter’s Yuletide present was sorted.

Growling, Richard finally came out of his pathetic crying fit and swiped for my ankle. My wings beat faster, lifting me fully into the air and out of reach. Tossing the knife at his crotch, I nodded as he went back to howling. All was right in the world. But just in case, I lifted my leg and slammed my heel into his head, knocking him out.

Four of the women smiled as they suddenly found the courage to advance now that I was ‘defenseless’. I glanced at them dryly. Did they not realise the only weapon I’d had was their boss’ knife? They should’ve deduced that I didn’t need one to commit murder.

Though to be fair, Richard wasn’t dead yet.

Darting forward, I grabbed Heidi’s arm, the enforcer furthest left. I stepped behind her, twisting her limb and slamming my other hand into the crook of her elbow. Her arm jerked naturally, bending as it should, and sent her knife deep into her back, nicely placed to pierce her lung. I twisted it until it caught in her ribs, and as she wheezed, I kicked her forward into Eve. Then I shuffled a step to the left, lining myself up with the other enforcers (one knife, one wand), as well as the two women behind me.

Ducking as Dev, the attacking one with a wand, raised her weapon at me and yelled, “Vurthesan!” (which was not the “iactus” trigger word that all premade wands were legally required to obey; naughty girl), I grinned at the yelp behind me. Fuck, I’d lined that up perfectly.

I winced. Unless…both of the enforcers behind me had also ducked and the magical blast had hit the poor guy who’d been crossing the street behind them at just that moment…

Whelp, couldn’t do anything about that now.

Jumping for the nearest table, I twisted over it and grabbed the half-eaten burger abandoned on a plate, I closed my lips over the meaty bread as I landed. Gods, I was starving. Too bad I couldn’t enjoy it.

My tongue working around the mess in my mouth, I found the two slices of gherkin and spat them into my palm just as Dev raised her wand at me. Jumping to the left, my wings flapping as she tracked me with her little stick, I threw the two slices of green vegetable right at her face. She opened her mouth to scream, “Vurthesan!” again, but half-way through, the word faded into choked gasps as her eyes bugged wide.

The bitch was severely allergic to gherkins according to her file, and two slices were now lodged in her throat.

I barely had the time to grin though before Aiyana, the other enforcer with a wand, shot a blasting spell at me. I ducked, and a bang hit the wall. A few patrons screamed before scrambling even further away from me.

Grabbing the corner of a tablecloth, I yanked it across me, dragging off everything that had been on top of it. As salt and pepper shakers, a basket of ketchup-drowned chips, and a glass of soda crashed towards the floor, I kicked them one by one. The salt and pepper shakers went into Morgan’s eyes, burrowing deep and causing her to drop her knife. The glass of soda splashed across Aiyana’s face, temporarily blinding her, but she smacked the glass aside before it could shatter against her dark skin. And the basket was kicked straight up. As the red chips went sailing high, I snagged a few and crammed them all into my mouth.

Bending over at the waist, I immediately gagged, spitting it all out. “Who the fuck puts vinegar on chips?”

Turning to glare at the patrons crammed against the wall behind me, terror in half of their faces, annoyance in the other (brawls were relatively common in this part of town), I asked, “Whose chips were those?”

A little girl raised her hand before her mother could shove it back down. “You and me are going to have a –”

I ducked as the runes on my back heated, letting me know danger was approaching. A red blast of magic shot over me, just where my head had been, and showered the restaurant’s wall in a glorious display of pain.

“Fucking rude,” I snapped as I turned back around to face the three still standing. Dev was motionless on the floor, having gone into anaphylactic shock. And Heidi, Morgan, and Richard were all still moaning like babies – out for the foreseeable future. At least Morgan was on her knees though, cradling her face instead of just sprawled out on the floor, whimpering.

Eve had long ago recovered from having Heidi shoved into her, but the paleness of her face matched her lack of confidence in attacking. Aiyana had her wand raised for another blast. And Savannah, the only enforcer who had yet to move, had a wariness in her eyes that made me smile.

As well as roll my eyes.

Why did the ‘tough ones’ always wait until the end? Didn’t they know tactfully, it was better to attack with the others?

It was no wonder the Crawliqa Gang hadn’t risen far in the ranks of Raza’s undergrowth. They were all utter morons.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said as I rubbed the back of my hand over my mouth, trying to remove the horrible taste of vinegar from my lips. I pointed at Aiyana Pretty Eyes, “I’m still going to kill you and take your eyes.” I gestured to Savannah and Eve. “But you two, I’ll let live if you tell me what I want to know.”

Eve’s eyes darted to the left before finding mine again.

I fucking knew it. The rude cunt who’d moved to the corner was somehow involved. She’d been eating all this time, not flinching, her stare unwavering from me as I’d made a fool of this gang.

Was she who they were meeting?

Was she the one who was not just encroaching on Alzan territory – Raza’s greatest enemy, a snake-like race we’d been fighting for millennia on our southern border – but who was also rumoured to be in bed with the Alzan king, agreeing to smuggle his soldiers into Kholar, Raza’s capital, in exchange for keeping the military out of her affairs?

All I’d learned about this new deal so far was it was being set up by one of the old gangs. The well-established terrors of the Raza undergrowth. The three gangs that had clung to the shadows FI-9, my organisation, hadn’t been able to scorch.

That didn’t make them cowards.

It made them dangerously intelligent.

The interrogation over, I tossed Richard’s eyes up, pulled two throwing knives out of the straps on my forearms, and flung one into Aiyana’s heart before she could fire another spell and the other into Savannah’s throat, dropping her to her knees. If she ripped it out, she’d bleed to death faster than her body could heal itself. If she left it in, she’d live until I was finished interrogating my real target, and I could then heal –

The idiot pulled it out.

Evangeline… Aurelia sighed.

What? I tried to save her, but I can’t cure stupid.

Looking at Eve as I caught Richard’s eyes, I asked, “Would you rather run and live a very short life where you meet a brutal end because of this lady” –I hiked a thumb over my shoulder– “or would you like to be taken into custody and given a new life where she finds you in a few years rather than days?” I dropped my hand but kept my magic tuned in on the woman behind me. She still hadn’t moved. She had, though, finished her meal. Fuck, I’d been hoping to steal a few chips or something.

Speaking of chips, that server boy better not have left before giving my order to the chef.

Swallowing, Eve dropped her knife and held up her hands, her eyes flicking to the woman in the corner.

“Come here then,” I said, pulling out a witch’s snare. A thin gold chain, it looked easily snappable, but it had been spelled to be unbreakable. Eve walked jerkingly towards me, piss running down her leg. She held out her hands as she neared, both of her arms shaking. I wrapped the snare around her wrists, not bothering to move her hands behind her. She wouldn’t be a threat even if she wasn’t a coward.

“I enjoy watching you fight.” The woman in the corner finally spoke, her voice sultry and calm.

Shoving Eve into a chair, I turned to face my real target and grinned. “You should watch me fuck.”

My eyes dipped low, to the empty plate in front of her, and I scowled. Smiling, she raised a hand and gestured for someone behind me.

A woman ducked into the kitchens, and I stilled as I waited for reinforcements to come charging out. of the runes on my skin allowed me to ‘see’ behind me, a sense of danger, of movement, a specific feel to each person. The woman was young, barely an adult, the magic of her ascension barely noticeable in the aura around her. I couldn’t see her hair colour or what she looked like, but I knew she was both scared and proud about being signalled out.

Everyone in this restaurant was most likely involved – even the little girl who’d raised her hand.

You should save her.

of these days, Aurelia’s morals were going to get me killed. Saving people left you open. Made you weak.

And still, my magic tuned in on the girl, marking where she was for when everything became fucked up beyond all repair.

The little shit would probably stab me in the back though. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t a high soldier, wasn’t trusted to attack without question.

I might not know which old family this was, none of the faces in here having crossed my desk during our years of investigation, but none of the old families allowed idiots or softies into their ranks. Everyone was initiated cruelly, not like in the Crawliqa, where they basically accepted everyone.

The door to the kitchens opened, and the chef came out carrying a plate of hot food. I didn’t turn to him as he neared despite the hairs on my back rising higher and higher with every step gained. I kept my attention on the mysterious woman in front of me, though I didn’t bother memorising her face, certain she was under disguise just like I was.

Although disguise magic was rare due to how risky it was, how easy it was for the spell to go wrong and permanently disfigure or even kill its target, the three old families had kept their status over the years because they all hailed from strong lines of witches.

The non-magic families had all been rounded up by the Fairy Intelligence. New ones popped up all the time, but they were short-lived and hunted down without mercy. There was only one new gang gaining any real traction, headed by a woman named Faceless – the Nameless Gang who didn’t leave a trace, just fear and bodies. A guild of assassins the other gangs hired out at great cost. Smoke, the most infamous assassin in this day and age, was part of it. She’d got past me five times, the bitch, killing people I was supposed to be protecting.

As the chef placed the plate down in front of me, his knuckles white, I looked over and grinned at him. Lifting a hand, I finger-waved. His golden eyes narrowed, clearly imagining strangling me in his beefy hands.

Picking up the burger without hesitation, I took a bite. My runes hadn’t detected any danger lurking within – no hidden blades or poison. And honestly, I would die for something greasy right now.

“Damn, chef, you know how to cook.” I swallowed and took another bite. “I kinda feel bad for killing your wife now.”

I placed Richard’s eyes, which were looking a bit tired, on the table and then wiped my hand on the tablecloth. Picking up a handful of chips, I popped them into my mouth.

“So are you going to tell me your name or am I just to address you as Cunt Face?” I asked politely as I picked up a salt shaker and dumped it over my chips.

Cunt Face smiled at me as she nodded at the chef to leave. “You can call me Aurelia.”

The hairs on my arms rose, and I wondered who Cunt Face was trying to bait me with. Princess Aurelia – the best friend I had failed to save and who now haunted my sanity.

Or my fucking daughter.

Planning on killing Ms Cunt Face either way, I picked up a serviette.