Chapter 24
Igaped at Kye. The blood drained from my face. I felt as if I’d been struck with a mallet.
“You can’t be serious.”
His smile grew, cruelly beautiful.
Chin tucked into my chest, I surveyed them with deep suspicion. “You’re both mad. You’re mad if you think I’ll agree to this. You must think I’m a fool to even let me read it.”
“Make no mistake. Even if you weren’t already destined for the pyre, after reading this, you would be,” Thaan replied.
“You’ll use me as a puppet to carry out your deeds and then kill me anyway. You’ve already betrayed me once.” I turned to Kye, whose expression had hardened into something inhumanly still. “You’d betray your own brother—”
“You are not a victim here,” Thaan interrupted. I bared my teeth at him. “I said I needed Naiads for a war. I wouldn’t throw your life away. This contract doesn’t end with you killing the prince.”
“When does it end, then?”
“When I say it does.”
“And when is that?”
His pale eyes gleamed. “I do not yet know.”
I shook my head. “I need a date.”
I couldn’t believe the words left my mouth, that I’d even consider signing. I’m sure I’d always thought myself above murder. Hadn’t I?
The feeling of a wooden handle brushed against my palm. A steel blade flashed in the corner of my eye. A voice whispered in my ear.
Murderer. Traitor. Coward.
Thaan watched me in silence, his thin lips stretched over his paper-dry face. I remembered how he’d avoided water on the beach and wondered when he’d last touched the sea.
Did Naiads dry out if they went too long without water?
My throat itched as if in answer.
“The contract ends when I say it ends.”
“No,” I said firmly, my breath hitting the table and warming my chin as I leaned forward. I gazed at Thaan, who met my eyes with a hint of challenge.
“No?” he said, a warning in his voice.
“I won’t be your little slave until you decide to release me,” I spat. “I”d rather you kill me tomorrow than wait my whole life for you to deem my freedom is necessary.”
“This is not a negotiation—”
“Kill me, then.” I sat straight, my eyes hardening on the older man, who looked at me as though he was tired of the sight of me. “Three years,” I said. “I’ll kill prince whoever-he-is and you’ll let me go.”
I must have lost my Mihauna-damned mind. I didn”t know how to kill people.
Thaan scoffed at the wall. “My dear girl, your full training might take ten.”
“Five,” I compromised. He glared at me.
“Fifty.”
I balked at him. “I’ll be seventy-two when it’s done, and you’ll be dead.”
His smile grew wicked, but he didn’t answer.
“Ten,” I said, though it was past the amount I was willing to agree to.
“My dear, I need you for a war that might not be declared for another twenty.”
“That’s your problem,” I said, knowing I stood on uneven ground. “Find someone else.”
Thaan tapped his fingers together. His eyes narrowed, and he didn”t move. I wasn’t sure he was even breathing.
“What a shame,” he said slowly. “What a waste.” He stood, walking one step at a time to stand in front of the window, his arms crossed behind his back. “What will your father say, when he hears you’ve been burned as a witch? What will he say when he himself is arrested for witchcraft, tried, and burned as well?”
I glared at his back. He turned around, facing my heat, meeting me with his own cold flame. “Perhaps the problem is endemic to Leihani. Perhaps the entire island should be torched.”
I stood, hands braced along the edge of the table, refusing to be bullied into a contract with no ending. “Until the end of war, then.”
Thaan considered my suggestion. He tapped his fingertips together under his jaw, searching me with his eyes. I raised my chin, warning him with my entire bodily presence: this was my last offer.
He inhaled. Exhaled. Then strode forward and pointed at the corner of the contract, where the word princess was written in black ink. “Until you are named queen.”
I stared at him in utter shock. “You are mad. I can’t be a queen.”
“Why not?”
“I know nothing about running a kingdom. I can barely read.”
“Your reading can be improved. As for running a country, it is ludicrous to believe you’d actually be doing so. The King doesn’t even run his country. He is merely a face and a voice for people to see and hear.”
Kye laughed again, and the stupid sound made me want to rip my hair out. He regarded me smugly over his crossed arms. “Besides. A queen is little more than a body in a chair. A trophy. A vessel for birthing heirs.”
My eyes darted to the coward. His gaze remained fixed on me. “I won’t marry him,” I said.
Thaan sighed. “Then you’re my servant until I say otherwise.”
I hesitated. Kye had mentioned one older brother, and three younger siblings. He was next in line for the throne. “He’s the second born?” I addressed Thaan, even though Kye was only feet away. Thaan’s chin gave a firm dip. “And how old is King Emilius?”
He tilted his head slightly. “Fifty-nine.”
“Okay,” I breathed, thinking to myself.
Thaan snapped his fingers, then held out a fountain pen for Cain. His assistant moved quietly to the table, adding a new string of words to my waiting contract, then slid it toward me for my approval.
Amendment: This contract will remain in effect until I am queen. I understand the consequences for breaching this contract are imprisonment or death.
Thaan held a small knife out to me.
Oxygen became thin. Was this really happening? Was I about to sign?
I watched in disbelief as I took the knife from him. The hand holding it wasn”t my hand. It looked like my hand—the right shape and size. Round nails. Calluses from gardening. A freckle over my third knuckle. But it couldn”t be my hand because I”d just said I wouldn”t sign. I couldn”t marry Kye. I couldn”t kill a man I”d never met.
Thaan cleared his throat. “Just your thumbprint.”
“Not my name?”
No answer.
I wasn’t certain what to do. How does one make a blood promise? Angling the blade right and left, I stalled for time. No one rushed me as I pricked the pad of my thumb, but sharp heat stole my breath as my blood hit the air. Fat, round drops of bright red burst through my skin like tiny juicy apples.
Thaan pointed to the bottom corner of the contract, and I pressed my thumbprint there. “Say the words, I swear it on my blood.”
I swallowed, my throat almost too dry to constrict, and breathed, “I swear it on my blood.”
For extra measure, Thaan pushed down on my thumb with his own fingers, rolling it right and left before lifting it away. My blood stuck to the parchment like dried honey, tugging the paper into the air until the tension grew enough for the contract to release, leaving a textured stamp left behind, embossed like the filigree of an embellished coat. It flashed once, a small spark, and faded in vibrancy.
I stared at it in numb wonder, my life laid out in black, white, and crimson, waiting to take me with it. My thumb ached dully. They both leered at me in triumph.
Pouring an inch of sparkling volare into each of the wine glasses, Kye handed me the frothy drink, eyes twinkling.
“To treason,” he said, smiling as he clinked my glass with his.
Thaan’s mouth twitched.
I barely heard Kye’s toast over the screaming fire inside my head.
I’d understood hatred before. But this was something else. Something deeper. Something wider. It wasn’t simply a poison in my mouth.
A river of loathing rushed through my veins, scorching everything it touched. I was a breathing storm. A corrupted sea, set ablaze. A volcano of magma and flame, trapped in the body of a woman scorned.
I could not be doused.
I signed their little contract—and when the time came, when the terms were fulfilled, when I was free, I’d kill them for it.
Kye would burn. Thaan would burn. Even his little assistant would burn.
And I’d watch until they were nothing but ash to throw into the water. Ash and dust, less substantial than the foam that flecked between the edge of the beach and the careless waves of the sea.