Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
Thea wrenched her attention away from Malek long enough to glance at where Talibah was looking: the bottom of the fireplace was moving. It was a trapdoor. And it was opening.
Malek spun round, withdrawing a dagger in the same breath and brandishing it.
‘No!’ Thea yelled, tensing her fingers and snagging fate’s threads.
Jasper emerged from the trapdoor, looking down at something glimmering in his palm.
Malek lunged for him just as Thea encircled his life’s threads, swiftly knotting them in place as she surrendered her memory of reading Falling in Hate with his Lordship.
Malek’s arm halted, his blade stopping just shy of Jasper’s throat.
Jasper pushed it aside as he stepped back up into his dining room, his frown more severe than Thea had witnessed in some time. He scanned the four intruders, his face set in stone, and when he spoke, his voice grated like an ancient rock. Hard and immovable. ‘What exactly is going on in here?’
Thea’s knees gave a threatening wobble.
With a happy chirrup, Biscuit soared into the room and settled on Jasper’s shoulder, giving his ear an affectionate nip.
‘Someone’s playing favourites,’ Zofka whispered to Talibah, narrowing her eyes at Biscuit’s attention-seeking.
‘You never received my note,’ Thea realised.
Her throat was thick, cloying with emotions as she stared at Jasper and his infuriating, beautiful face.
He had stolen her heart. And maybe it had felt like he’d seen into her soul when they’d clashed in the forest, perhaps he had kissed her as if she was the most precious thing in the world, but he’d also refused to cut a new deal with her.
Thea needed her memories. She needed to understand. She glanced around the room; her heart could be close by. Zofka caught her eye, raising her eyebrows in a silent question. Thea’s eyes slid down to Zofka’s borrowed sword, wondering if they could do anything to buy a little more time.
In silence, Jasper unrolled Thea’s note.
His gaze lifted to Thea. ‘Consider me warned,’ he said dryly, pocketing it.
His gaze locked on Malek. ‘Malek Jaromir. I took the liberty of having you investigated before you took Theodora to the Winter Ball. Would you care to inform me what the head of the Bohemian wing of Magic Hunters is doing trespassing in my home?’
Malek was a mouse in an owl’s talons. He stammered something unintelligible.
Quicker than a hunting snake, Jasper liberated Zofka of her purloined sword, bringing the blade to rest at Malek’s throat. ‘Not good enough,’ he growled.
‘I presume he’s pointing the sword at Malek?’ Talibah asked in an aside and Thea nodded, holding onto the threads she’d used to tie him in place.
Jasper pressed the sword harder against Malek’s throat. ‘This may be rusted, but I would wager I can still slice your head off with it.’
Trapped by Thea’s threads, Malek couldn’t evade the blade.
‘Fine, fine, fine,’ he yelped. ‘I asked Thea to make me a key so that I might enter your property without your or anyone’s detection.
Pan Novak thought I invited Thea to the ball for my own satisfaction, but I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist attending if I took Thea. ’
Thea chanced a look at Jasper. Their glances collided like passing stars. A flash of feeling, too powerful, too brief.
Malek gave a dry laugh. ‘I might have been a scoundrel to use you for your power, Thea, but you were using me, too. It was plain to all to see where your heart truly lay.’
Zofka let out an outraged gasp.
‘How dare you?’ Thea yanked harder on his threads, forcing him up onto the balls of his feet. ‘We are not the same. I wanted to like you. I held only the best intentions—’
‘You’re too sanctimonious for your own good.’ Malek laughed again, though this time it was hard, mocking. ‘Too bound up with feeling sorry for yourself that you’re blinded to everything you have. That power—’
Jasper’s hand slipped on the sword, cutting into Malek’s throat and cutting off his words. ‘Continue your story,’ he growled.
‘I knew the raid on the Quarter would be the perfect chance for me to uncover your secrets,’ Malek managed to gasp.
‘Give me enough time to find your hiding places. I had expected more creativity than a trapdoor in the hearth.’ He had the audacity to dart an accusing look Thea’s way.
‘What I didn’t consider was that the key you spent so long making might not work. ’
‘Thea’s power forged that key.’ Jasper answered the question before Thea could find the words, outrage painting her cheeks red. ‘Of course she is exempt from its effects. That is an object borne of her; she will be immune.’
Still Malek looked sceptical. ‘Then why can you also see me?’ he questioned Jasper.
‘You are not in the position to be asking questions,’ Jasper snarled, snatching the key from Malek’s hand.
‘Hold on.’ Talibah seemed half lost in thought. ‘You entered Stiltskin’s Apothecary before the wards were first damaged. How did you sneak through them?’
‘I needed a potion to fix my insomnia.’ Malek stared at the key Jasper was pocketing, hunger etched through his expression.
‘And I had a request. Any ill will I held was purely towards you, and you weren’t living in the Quarter.
’ He aimed his words at Jasper. ‘I’ve been hearing whispers about you and your kind’s power for years.
I know you’re practically immortal; there are rumours about the magical artefacts you have hidden here.
Stiltskin’s Apothecary might be popular with people in the know in Prague, but you – you are the source of all that power. ’
Anger ripped through Thea. Malek wheezed, those traitorous lips Thea had kissed mottling blue. Almost as if . . .
‘Not that I’d mind if you killed the toad,’ Zofka said mildly, ‘you know I’m the kind of friend who’d help you bury a body, but it does sound like you’re strangling him, Thea.’
Thea loosened the threads she held with a start. ‘You were working with another fate-weaver. With Heloise. Why didn’t you target her instead?’
Malek gasped for air, his cheeks flooding with returning blood. ‘She doesn’t live in this world, and—’ His words rasped against his throat.
‘And what?’ Thea snapped.
‘And she paid me,’ he admitted. ‘She paid me to summon my wing of Hunters here, to ally myself with Pan Novak, the other Magic Hunter living in Prague, and his weaselly efforts to get noticed by myself and the rest of the councillors that rule this city.’
Zofka snorted. ‘How surprising that you didn’t have an original idea in your head.’
Malek glowered at her. ‘The key was my idea.’
‘And lying to me about a sister that desperately needed rescuing, was that your idea, too?’ Thea asked, her voice dripping with cold anger.
Malek smirked. ‘That story worked like magic on you, didn’t it?’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t claim credit for that one though, that came from Heloise.’
Jasper towered over Malek, the deep shadows beneath his eyes etched in fury, each word a searing cut. ‘You are fortunate Thea has spared you today.’
Malek exhaled, slumping against Thea’s threads. She released them, letting him fall to the stone floor. He hit it with a pleasing smack.
‘That’s my girl,’ Talibah murmured.
Malek began scrabbling backwards, fighting to get to his feet as Jasper handed his ancient sword back to Zofka. Jasper seized Malek’s collar and hauled him to his feet. ‘I will not be so forgiving,’ he whispered.
Thea swallowed apprehensively. She was angry at Malek. Jasper was angrier.
Malek’s pale face whitened on registering Jasper’s words.
Moving with that same preternatural speed he’d displayed earlier, Jasper flipped his trapdoor open with one boot and threw Malek down into it.
Thea gaped at Jasper as he shut and bolted the trapdoor, drowning out Malek’s scream as he fell into gods knew what. ‘What’s down there?’
‘My vault. It’s unreachable, an underground fortress.’ Jasper dusted his hands. ‘My apologies that your raven could not breach it; it was not my intent to concern you. Now, I have everything that I need to reinstate the wards, shall we—’
Zofka swung the ancient sword wildly through the air, hitting Jasper’s head with the blunt side of the blade.
He fell to the floor and did not move.