Chapter 29
S in didn’t believe me when I told him I was suddenly feeling ill. I blamed it on my training session with Aeverie this morning, that the magic expulsion must have drained my reserves further than I realized, and that was the cause of my sudden headache and chills.
He wanted to call for a healer to escort me to our chambers, but I refused. Perhaps too quickly, and that is why his downward eyes narrowed at my dismissal. He knew I was lying to him. I saw it in the way his eyes flitted between both of mine as if he were searching for something. The reason for my secrecy, the root of my frequent lies.
Ironic, that as I step out of the carriage in front of the castle, my stomach truly does fall ill as the weight of my deception settles into my gut like a swallowed stone. I told Sin I only needed time in a warm bath, and that I would call for some lavender tea before lying down. Lies. Rest would cure me, I told him. Another lie. Nothing but finding this dagger, swapping the rubies, and hand delivering it to Torin will rid me of this sickness. The one currently driving a wedge between Sin and me. I will have it no longer.
I don’t dally. I head straight through the front doors and make no detours as I climb the staircase to the floor of Sin and my bedchamber. Except, instead of turning left, I veer right, heading for the wing that is temporarily housing the elven officers.
The wing is silent, the rooms abandoned for the festival happening just minutes away in the city. A reprieve we all need, but one I cannot afford. Vox’s chambers are the farthest down the corridor because they are also the largest. Since the high priestess preferred to sleep in the conservatory, that means these chambers went to the next highest-ranking member of their society—the elven commander.
There are no guards posted in this corridor, which isn’t surprising. The Black Art doesn’t even have guards outside our chambers, having once mentioned he never felt like he had true privacy when his shifter ears were sensitive to them breathing and shuffling outside his doors. I was betting everything on Sin having offered the elves that same courtesy and thank the goddess he did. Getting through the locked door, however, might prove to be more of a challenge. With a casual glance over my shoulder to confirm I’m still alone, I press my hand to the door, pressing my collective against it in the same motion.
The lock offers no resistance, my magic swiftly releasing the pins. The door groans loudly as it swings open, and I quickly slip inside, closing it behind me. If I had been hoping for a surge of relief once I was inside, it doesn’t come. Contrarily, my heart begins to race faster now as I take in the spacious quarters harboring all the commander’s private belongings.
Guarded by a single lock.
One that any of the castle’s skeleton keys could open. Easy. Far too easy.
I don’t have time to ponder it further. Don’t have time to do anything except assess the room and find the dagger. Haste and discretion are my priority—everything else can wait, including the bells that sound a warning in my head, that something about this isn’t right.
True to his demeanor, the commander’s quarters are orderly. There is a large, four-poster bed pushed against the wall, and an upholstered footstool resting at its base. A red brick hearth occupies a large part of the left wall, but judging by the clean stone, it hasn’t been used in quite some time. The farther end of the room is set up as a study with a desk and a cabinet for filing.
I head there first. I don’t waste time, pulling out each desk drawer and lightly rummaging through the contents, careful to put everything back as I left it before moving onto the next drawer. And the next. And then the final drawer. No dagger. The cabinet is also filled with nothing but scribbled-on parchment and a few rolled up scrolls.
I head for the armoires next, throwing open the drawers and parting the clothing hanging neatly from the rack. My hands reach for the wall behind the garments, feeling for any hidden compartments, but they find nothing but wood. Straightening, I turn around and scan the room, then move to the hearth, dropping to my knees to check inside. Perhaps it appears unused because it is being utilized as storage for, say, an enchanted dagger. A quick sweep inside confirms it is vacant. Dammit .
There isn’t much art on the walls, but I check behind the few landscape paintings, looking for any depressions or signs of loose stones that might lead to a hidden compartment in the walls.
I spin in place, my eyes darting from one surface to the next, and my hands scouring everything that opens, bends, or lifts, looking for the subtle gleam of metal, a tug in the collective where I might feel the weapon’s power humming.
Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing!
I let out a low groan as I stalk back towards the bed, resisting the urge to flop into it, fall asleep, and pretend none of these disconcerting conflicts exist. Bury all my worries into the mattress and…
The mattress!
Hope turns my chest into a fire basket as I kneel and reach a hand beneath it, my fingers skimming for the cool hilt of a blade and finding nothing but bundled cotton and down and… what is that?
A strip of fabric that isn’t quite flush with the rest of the material. I crawl my fingers to the edge of a seam and hook one inside it, the fabric giving way to a small opening cut inside the mattress. Adrenaline pounds through my veins as I shove my hand through the hole, and relief shatters my chest like glass when the cool nip of metal grazes the underside of my fingertips. I grab the handle and feed it through the opening into my other hand, then sit back, pulling both hands free.
Two rubies wink back at me from either side of the sweeping crossguard. The dagger is exactly as I remember it—smooth steel that’s been polished to mirror clarity with that strange elven symbol resembling an X beneath a half circle, and the twin rubies along the sides.
Nausea overcomes me.
The last time I held this blade, it was made hot and sticky as the Black Art’s blood trickled through my clenched knuckles, Sin and my magic plummeting through the earth’s crust to chase out the chaos left behind by Ephraim. The last time I held this blade was when I watched as black vines raced up Sin’s body to collar his throat, these rubies siphoning the magic from his veins and the blood from his heart. The last time I held this blade… I killed the other half of my soul.
My hands begin to tremble, the weight of the past sending a tremor rocking through me. I killed him! Plunged this blade straight through his chest, pierced my lover’s heart, however black it may be. I remember so clearly how his power tore through me, how it sang in my blood and thickened my marrow until my every fiber hummed with god magic. Magic that is now battling the confines of its new polished, faceted prisons.
Tossing the dagger onto the bed, I reach one hand to the comb in my hair and the other to the blade at my thigh, my fingers working to slip them both free when?—
“You will stop at once.”
Ice replaces my blood, and I heed Vox’s cold warning, slowly standing to face him while relaxing both hands to my sides. Goddess help me, I just needed a few more minutes!
“Vox, I?—”
“So disappointing,” he interjects, his words edged with thorns. He takes a step towards me, and I swallow, willing my feet to remain planted, but my forearms warm as my magic instinctively reacts to the predatory glint in his onyx eyes. I’ve seen the commander angry before, witnessed him bark out orders as tensions rose, but this… finding the bloodwitch, one he deemed a friend, ransacking his private quarters to thieve the dagger he was oath-bound to safekeep, has the elf downright furious . But it’s the lack of blatant anger on his face that knots my stomach most. He’s masking his expression, masking his next move.
And I don’t like that at all.
“There’s so much more involved than what you’re thinking right now,” I say.
“You mean to suggest there is some honorable intent behind you breaking into my private room and stealing my possession?” he says with a quick incline of his head to gesture to the dagger that still lies on the bed.
Has he taken another step forward? He’s definitely closer now, his elven movements so fluid I hadn’t detected how quickly he was closing the gap between us. No—between him and the dagger.
“You stole it first,” I bite out. “It was never yours to possess.”
“Do. Not ,” he roars, his tone taking on new hostility, “lecture me on such matters, blood mage. Not when it is that royal-blooded prick, his lineage, and his entire circle that has robbed us of our lands for decades. God power does not belong to man. It never has, and for you to feign fondness for my company in some ruse to steal from me and return that kind of power to him… How disappointing, indeed.”
“I was not feigning our friendship, Vox, but as I said, there is more to this than you know, and I need you to listen,” I say, my heartbeat quickening like erratic wingbeats. I have no choice but to tell him. If I don’t, he’ll surely accuse Sin and me of conspiring to betray our alliance with the elves. “Singard doesn’t know I’m here. He’s in the dark about all of it. When Torin took me that day at the waystone, he told me about a seer, and he made me a deal. He stole a lock of my hair and said the seer was going to use it to form a connection with Sin, to be able to pry into his collective at times and see through his eyes. Torin made me a bargain, believing I was the Black Art’s prisoner. He said if I brought him the dagger, he would offer me refuge into Baelliarah, his kingdom. His bed, even.”
A flicker of surprise flashes across his face, and ever so slightly, one of Vox’s pale eyebrows arches. I continue before he can decide whether he believes me or not. “I told him I would try to get the dagger to appease him but planned on confessing everything when he sent me back. But after I returned and Sin killed the general, everything was so hectic, and then I started to worry… what if Torin was telling the truth, and he really did have a seer? I thought he might have just been trying to frighten me into doing his bidding, but I wasn’t sure I could chance telling Sin and having his seer… well… see it.
“Then he started having headaches , Vox. Severe ones, and I’m certain it’s from her latching onto his collective. If Torin found out a bloodwitch was aiding the Black Art, he would come at us with siege weapons at once.” I pause to collect my breath.
“And you thought presenting our enemy with a dagger infused with god magic was a viable solution?” he asks incredulously.
“Of course not,” I snap. “It’s the rubies that siphoned Sin’s magic, is it not? I was going to pry out the rubies from the comb you gave me and swap them with those in the knife. Torin is mundane so he wouldn’t recognize the lack of magic, and his seer is likely unfamiliar with both god and elven magics. It would take her countless hours, weeks, moons of experimenting to determine it was a falsity. Not a permanent solution, but one that would have bought us more time to prepare for a war we’re not equipped to win, and certainly not without heavy casualties.”
“What possible interest would a mundane king have with Adelphia’s magic?” he asks, tilting his head up to assess me over the slender slope of his nose.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. His quarters on the ship were strange, to say the least. Everything was in disarray—parchment scattered, several tomes opened and splayed about… it was as if he were searching for something. All I know is we cannot tell Singard about this so long as his seer has a connection to him.”
“You are asking me to commit treason ,” he growls the word.
“Vox, I need to get this dagger to Torin. It is our only hope at appeasing the seer for now, distract her enough for me to tell Sin everything and give us time to better prepare. Restore Sin’s magic, even, if you would just?—”
“Nonsense,” he barks, taking another step towards me, this one much more noticeable. “The rubies siphon, blood mage. They take . They do not return.”
“Impossible,” I say, my lip curling up to reveal my teeth. “All magic is reversible. If Ephraim’s chaos could be undone, so can this.”
“Ephraim’s chaos was not Source!” he shouts, actually shouts . “Insulting for you to even compare the two. Tell me, blood mage, what were you planning to do when you returned the dagger to him? Accept his offer to warm his bed until you found a way to sneak back to our isle?”
I balk at him, my chest expanding as my nails curl into my palms. “It wasn’t to be an immediate exchange. I was to deliver the dagger first, giving Torin an advantage, though I do not know how his seer planned to retrieve the magic from it, if it truly is impossible to reverse. Then when they released the god magic, they were going to take the isle, retrieve me from the dungeon, and sail me back under Baelliarah banners.”
Not a single muscle feathers in Vox’s face as he studies me, his eyes unblinking as he regards me with elven otherness . The space between us both thickens and thins, each second a minute too long, each breath a thunderclap between our bodies.
His stare is still locked with mine when he suddenly dives to his left, giving no announcement before springing for the dagger on the bed. I leap, me being a few inches closer to the bed, but just as my fingers vice around the hilt, the elf’s hard body slams into mine.
It’s like being hit with a wagon. My lungs deny me air as his weight forces me on the bed, Vox quickly moving to straddle me. He presses me further into the mattress, his hand swiping for the dagger I clutch above my head. Just as he vices my wrist, I shove my hand against his leather cuirass, inferno-tipped magic blazing from my fingertips into his chest.
The elf pauses as his eyes drop to where my hand should be searing an imprint into his chest, but his quick snarl, irritated , not pained, tells me my magic is doing nothing but pissing him off.
He’s blocking the magic somehow. Stupid, fucking elf.
His vice on my wrist tightens well past the point of pain as he works to force the muscles in my hand to slacken and release the dagger. My nails puncture my palm as I grip the hilt as hard as I possibly can, and my other hand releases its hold on my magic. He might have found a way to block my power, but that doesn’t render that hand fucking useless.
With as much force as I can muster, I slap the commander across the face. My nail hooks his eye, and he growls, his chest collapsing to mine as he bars his forearm across my jugular. He parts my thighs with his knee, rendering me unable to kick him off me, and his weight on my chest keeping me from striking him with my hand again.
“Get off of me,” I hiss.
“As soon as you give me what I?—”
Vox flies off me—no, he’s ripped off me—and I scramble to the far side of the bed, taking the dagger along with me. My feet are on the floor a second later, yanking my dress, now a wrinkled mess of a thing, back down. I reverse the knife in my hand. He may be resisting my magic, but I’d like to see his ribs resist the blade I plunge between them should he lunge for me again. I spin to defend myself but stop as I behold the blood sport before me.
The floor shifts beneath me as a cacophony of bangs, rattling frames, and masculine grunts rends the room. Goddess, fetch me . Of course, it had to be him.
Sin shoves the commander against the wall—his hand locking his throat—a hold the elf makes quick work to free himself from, using the Black Art’s momentum to force him into the wall.
“Stop it!” I shout at once, rushing to the other side of the bed, but I keep my distance still, not willing to bring the dagger any closer to Vox.
Neither of the males acknowledge me, but Vox drops his hands from where they had twisted into Sin’s leathers, and he retreats. A single step, but it’s enough to send a serrated exhale through my lips. Sin pushes off the wall, his muscles visibly trembling with the need to release his beast.
Sin’s voice is a muted, dangerous thing. “ You would dare? ” His head flicks to the side in a rapid, feral movement, his chin gesturing to the bed he just found me forcibly pinned against. “You have seconds to tell me why I just found my wife beneath you.”
“She isn’t your wife.”
A low hiss. “She is so much more.”
“Both of you, stop it,” I snap, daring one step closer. Vox’s eyes flit to track my movement immediately, earning a low, deep growl from Sin’s chest. “Sin, I need you to pause and listen to me. There is much to explain.”
It’s as if he doesn’t hear me at all, his attention still firmly fixed on the commander. “Your seconds are fleeting, elf ,” he spits. “ Answer the question. ”
Vox bristles. “Perhaps your question is better suited for her, as it was your betrothed that came to my chambers, not the other way around, Black Art,” he drawls the title.
For a second, one fleeting, agonizing second, Sin’s anger fractures, and I glimpse the pain there. It’s gone in an instant, his eyes turning to liquid black as his pupils dilate into vertical slits, swallowing all traces of his affliction. But I saw it, no matter how quickly he hid it. The hurt.
The uncertainty .
Nausea churns in my gut, my heart pounding like thunderous wingbeats.
“Tell him, Wren,” Vox says, his head swiveling to meet the ire in my stare. “Tell him how you sidled up to me in the library to earn my affectio—” he clears his throat—“my trust . Were you hoping I might invite you to my quarters? It’s certainly within your pattern of follies to find yourself beneath powerful men. Go ahead and tell your intended how you agreed to bring Torin the dagger that houses his power. How you whore out your name to whichever king promises you riches to spend, and a cock to fill your belly with.”
And that’s when Sin punches him in the face.
The Black Art erupts into something savage as his fist connects with Vox’s jaw, the force of it sending the elf spinning halfway around. Sin moves on the opening, his forearm flying up to rob the breath from the commander’s lungs as he shoves him to the wall. His other hand, the one he used to strike him with, flies forward again, but this time, it’s to grab his throat.
No—something hanging from his throat.
Sin yanks a braided rope from the elf’s neck, glancing at the large ruby bound inside a corded cage before tossing it behind him. “If you’re going to attempt to accost me, at least do it with some fucking honor.”
I didn’t sense a ward on Vox because there wasn’t one. The ruby he wore must have served as a siphon, absorbing my magic before it could make impact. And something tells me it was magicked to the lock sealing his chamber, alerting him when the pins were jostled loose. The commander didn’t have his possessions heavily guarded because he wanted to catch whoever dared to thieve them.
Vox bares his teeth, a sharp hiss slipping out from between them as blood rushes from his nose and drips over the battered swells of his lips. “Do not use words you don’t understand,” he spits. “The most honorable thing you could have done is die in your cradle, but I suppose your own mother’s coldness for you kept the fevers at bay.”
I dive between them without thinking, pinning my back to Vox’s chest half a second before Sin’s fist comes barreling forward again. My eyes fly shut instinctively, regret immediately coursing through me as I realize how foolish it was to dive between them a fragment of a second before Sin buried his swollen knuckles into the elf’s face once more.
The very stone beneath me rattles as his claws punch into the wall next to my head. My eyes open as breath rushes in to expand my lungs that constricted, but as soon as I do, I almost wish Sin had knocked me unconscious, so I wouldn’t have to face what I glimpse in the onyx abyss his pupils have become.
A shadow I glimpsed on my own face just months before.
The look of a man betrayed.
“ Move , Wren,” he orders slowly, his muted voice somehow making him sound even more threatening.
“I know you have grown familiar with being the Black Art’s guard dog, but you do not ever put yourself between me and a threat. Do you understand me, blood mage?”
I whirl around at the sound of his voice, my palms igniting with fiery wisps I command to vice the commander’s wrists to the wall behind him, faster than even his elvish reflexes can dodge.
The tip of the dagger is tucked between his ribs a second later, the blade flirting with the creases of his leather armor. “And you do not ever speak for me again. How dare you,” I seethe, my jaws grinding as I nudge the blade against him harder still, but the elf doesn’t flinch, his black eyes holding mine. “Preaching to me about asserting my worth only to degrade me to the perversions of men. I trusted you with the details of my agreement with Torin, and for you to use that against me as if I had any true choice in such a matter, is low.”
It's then that I see it. The creasing around his pale lips, the tautness of his jaw as if he’s keeping himself from swallowing as my words burn shame into him. The elf is more than angry… he is hurt .
His mouth says nothing while his eyes won’t shut up, and against my better judgment, I can’t stop understanding from spearing me in the chest. “I am many things, Vox, but I am not ingenuine. There is nothing I ever said to you that was not true, and our friendship was never feigned. Not on my end, at least.
“I understand how this looks, but I promise you every choice I made was to try to protect all of us. I’m sorry that I had to act on the information you shared with me, to come looking for the dagger in your chambers. And I am sorry that I was going to jeopardize the integrity of Aloisa’s comb. I did not wish to dishonor her memory by doing so, I only wished to protect those that I love, too. Forgive me.”
Vox closes his eyes, shaking his head as he exhales a tight, controlled breath. When he reopens them, sorrow has replaced much of the fury that had encapsulated him just moments prior. “It is unlike my kind to be swayed by wayward emotions, but it seems I allowed hurt feelings to guide my tongue, and possibly damage our friendship permanently. Selfishly, I hope that it has not, and that your heart will come to forgive my misguided one in time.”
His elvish nature prevents my collective from sifting through his, but the sincerity in his voice is enough for me to believe his intentions to be true. “I am able to forgive the words spoken out of anger, but”—I raise the blade to his collarbone, the tip inches from the alabaster skin of his throat—“do not ever suggest that I am disloyal to my Mate. There are few things I would kill for, but telling my betrothed I have betrayed him is at the top of that short list.”
His only response is a sharp dip of his head.
I slam the side of the hilt into his chest. “Take the wretched thing,” I snarl, then spin on my heels, directly into Sin.
I’m not sure what I was expecting to see when I turned, but it wasn’t the hostility viciously painted across his face. His jaws grind mercilessly, pulling the skin tight across the high angles of his cheekbones. The Black Art’s expression is unexpected, but the way he firmly grabs my arm and pulls me behind him is downright startling. I hold my tongue until he pulls me into the corridor, not wanting to snap at him in front of Vox given the altercation that just transpired. But as soon as the door closes behind us, and we gain some distance down the corridor, I plant my feet, jerking my arm free from his grip.
“You do not handle me like t—” I start, but am silenced when he suddenly rushes me, pushing me back so my shoulders slam into the wall, my head bouncing off the hand he planted behind me so I wouldn’t bash my head into the wood.
Oh, hell no.
“Have you lost your damn mind? Unhand me at once.” I bare my teeth at him.
He collars my throat, inclining his head to drag his lips across the crown of my ear before I can get out another word. “ Careful , witch,” he purrs, and my traitorous cunt purrs right back. “I give you a taste of freedom, and how eager you are to abuse that privilege, sneaking behind my back for a taste of elven cock.”
Pain harpoons my chest, followed immediately by shock, then white-hot anger . I wrap my hand around his forearm, preparing to sear the flesh there if he doesn’t release me at once. “Let go of me, Singard. Now .”
“And risk letting you out of my sight again? Come off,” he snarls, tightening his grip. Not enough to bruise, but enough to keep me controlled. “Since you want to betray my trust and sneak around like a harlot, you’ll return to the dungeon as one. Look at me, Wren,” he demands.
I obey, meeting his blackened stare while deciding if it’s better to punch the bastard or knee him in the groin, ignoring the hurt that twists into my heart like an iron blade. Why is he acting like this? He can’t possibly think I have betrayed him on the nights I spent with Vox in the library, or that I snuck into his bedchamber for any other reason than retrieving the dagger.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking there are not eyes on you always. You are always being watched. Do you understand me?”
Relief overcomes me, but I force my posture to remain vexed, because yes, I do understand. He’s figured it out. Maybe not fully, but enough to know that we’re being watched. Sin isn’t trying to hurt me… he’s protecting me. Playing his role, and right now, desperately hoping that I hear the double meaning in his words so that I play mine. Ever so subtly, he traces circles across my neck with his thumb. A plea for me to feel the softness of his touch, despite the aggression he is having to portray.
I swallow under his hand. “Yes, Your Grace,” I bite out.
His eyes flit between both of mine, assessing. Making sure I understand his ruse. Whatever he glimpses in my gaze must confirm I do, because he suddenly leans forward again, the fingers wrapped around my throat tightening. “That’s my good little witch,” he murmurs.
Let’s hope the seer can’t also see how fucking wet his voice just made me. Goddess, no mortal man should possess a voice that sexy; it’s downright criminal.
And it certainly isn’t an appropriate time for me to be entertaining debaucherous thoughts.
Sin pushes off the wall, and he grabs my bicep once more, steering me through the corridor, down the winding staircase to the main story, and then down a second stairwell into the dungeon. We’re silent the entire walk. It’s a long walk, neither of us chancing anything we say being heard by Torin’s seer, but why is he taking me to the dungeon? If he’s put together that Torin has a seer, then he knows it’s possible she’s already seen us not fighting. It’s not as if the dungeon offers any more privacy from seer magic than our bedchamber has.
We reach the bottom of the subterranean stairwell, and when we round the corner, the sight before me stutters the breath in my lungs.
It’s packed .
Bodies are crammed into the cells lining both sides of the long, damp corridor. The stench is assaulting. A mix of damp earth, bodily fluids, sweat, and molding stone. A symphony of obscenities are shouted at us as we walk between the stretch of cells, most of them targeted at Sin, but a few are clearly meant for my ears, unless it is the Black Art they call a bloodthirsty whore .
“Resisters,” Sin murmurs to me as he guides me farther down the dimly lit hallway, wads of spit landing at our feet. Sin doesn’t so much as grant them a passing look, so I don’t either, keeping my chin raised and my shoulders back as he pulls me around several more bends in the underground labyrinth, until we leave the last of the cells behind us. We pass several areas where the hall splits into two directions, Sin never hesitating as he directs me down the tunnel of his choice, clearly knowing his way around here more than any decent person should know their way away around a dungeon used for torturing prisoners.
But Sin has never been decent . And I crave him all the more because of it.
“Is your father down here?” I ask.
He grunts. “And Langston.”
Sin doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask. They are being held separately from the rest of the resisters then, and a chill not entirely from the brisk underground climate wraps itself around each of my ribs. I don’t envy whatever fate Sin has sentenced them to.
My feet come to a halt as Sin suddenly turns and steps in front of me, pressing both of his hands to the stone. He slowly moves them outwards and down, as if tracing a large square into the wall, magic emanating from his fingertips and licking the stone. Just as I’m about to ask if his grapple with Vox has made him delirious, there is the distinct sound of grinding stone, and a door appears in the space he had outlined with his fingers.
Sin presses his palm to the large, black lock, and it clicks, the door swinging outward with a long groan. He grabs me again, tugging my back to his chest, and I startle as his lips graze the lobe of my ear. “Isolated enough that no one will even hear the delicious, little cries you’re about to make for me.” He steps us both into the room before giving me a light shove forward. “Now go put your hands on the wall and spread those fucking legs.”
Confusion swims through me, but I do as I’m told. Sin seals the door shut behind us, and the lock audibly clicks back into place on the other side. I flinch when he’s suddenly on me, his hands finding my waist and spinning me towards him. Then he presses my cheek to his chest and tucks his face into my hair, his hand cradling the back of my head. He releases me a moment later, only holding me to him for a second, as if needing me to feel his apology for how he just treated me, despite him doing it for my protection.
“We can speak freely in here. The room is heavily magicked to block outside interference, including seers ,” he growls the word. “He has one, doesn’t he? Told you when he took you through the waystone.”
“Yes.”
He crosses to the other side of the room, running a hand through his long hair. “The headaches,” he spits. “I should have known.” His whisper is laced with fury, directed more to himself than me.
“You’re sure she can’t see us in here?” I ask, looking at the barren cell around me.
A dark chuckle, one that is far, far from humor. “More than anything,” he says cryptically.
I glance around me again, certain that I must be missing something, but I ignore the thought for now. Instead, I blow out a long breath.
And then I tell him everything.
I omit nothing, leave no detail unmentioned. From my conversation with Torin, to what I learned from Vox in the library, to my plan to swap the rubies in the comb with those in the dagger, all the way to the point that Vox caught me in his room.
Sin is silent while I recount the last several weeks, his back pressed against the wall with his arms folded tightly across his chest, the leather of his cuirass pulled tight across his shoulders. I release a sharp breath when I finally finish, my throat now feeling as if it’s been stung by a wasp from speaking so quickly.
When he does speak, it’s to ask in a voice black as pitch, “Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head.
“This is why you’ve been so distant from me?” he asks.
I nod, hoping my confession will bring him relief, but something dark still lingers in the depths of his eyes. “Sin, you… You didn’t think I had betrayed you, did you? When you found me under him, before you realized we were struggling over the dagger, did you… did that thought cross your mind?”
I swallow hard, nausea now really stirring in my gut when he doesn’t answer immediately, Sin’s face betraying the insecurity he has spent a lifetime burying beneath smug grins and sharpened swords. I go to him, my footsteps echoing in the tight space, and I take his chin between my thumb and forefinger.
“Do you not trust me?” I whisper. Fire burns in my chest, my heart a smoldering slab of regret for my deceptions. For making him question my loyalty when our relationship has always balanced on the precipice of stubborn mistrust and unyielding passion.
He is quiet for a long moment, each silent second intensifying the maelstrom between us. Fear grips my heart—if after everything we’ve been through, every storm we’ve endured, and every sword we faced—the Black Art can still not find it in his heart to trust me.
His voice is strained when he finally answers. “I knew you were lying to me. It wasn’t just the repeated excuses, or the distance… I could smell it on you. The secrets. The scheming. I will not lie and say I wasn’t acutely aware of exactly how much time you were spending with Vox, or how your gaze trailed after him when he left us at the festival. I had strong suspicions that with whatever you weren’t telling me, the elf was involved.”
Air hisses between his teeth, and he lifts his chin out of my grasp, taking a few steps away from me to lean against the wall there instead. The hand that had been touching him turns to ice. Ice that quickly moves up my arms and skewers my chest. “That doesn’t answer my question.” I force myself to speak the words.
Sin is death incarnate when he casts his dark gaze to me. “If I thought you were fucking him, little witch, you’d have known it when you found his mutilated corpse. But that did not stop me from thinking that maybe he was giving you something that I could not.”
I walk to stand in front of him again, refusing to grant him the space he put between us. “What could he possibly have been giving me that you could not?”
His eyes don’t waver from mine when he answers tightly, “A relationship not tainted from the malice I bled into it. Affection that is not challenged as manipulation, and physical touch that does not make you flinch because it comes from hands that have hurt you. None of those, Wren, are things that I can give to you. As much as I wish I could undo it, and Adelphia help me, I wish I could undo it , but not even divine intervention could reverse the hurt I inflicted onto you. And it never should. I did what I did, and I am who I am. And you…” His eyes dart to the wall over my shoulder. “You deserve to be loved by someone who has never hurt you like I have.”
His words stun me as a cloudburst of emotion downpours into my chest. I knew Sin was struggling, heard it in words, felt it in his touch, tasted it in his kiss, but this… My chest aches as I finally grasp just how heavily my love has been plagued by his own demons. Singard Kilbreth, the warlord with a reputation as black as his namesake title, is haunted by his betrayal of me.
“Look at me,” I whisper, willing my voice not to break. When he slowly tilts his head back to lock eyes with mine, I say, “You are who you are, but that does not mean you are who you were .” I take another step towards him. “We both know I am not innocent, so do not pretend that I am. I saw the darkness in your heart, tasted the wickedness on your tongue, and I fell in love with you still. Not in spite of who you were, but because of who you were.
“When I learned what you had done, it gutted me to my core. I thought for sure my anger would have overcome me, and I’d release my creature, but all I felt when I learned what you’d done was pain that you were capable of doing such a thing to me. I felt… so foolish. The only true fury I felt was inward for having allowed myself to believe that what you felt for me was pure, and that I had allowed myself to fall in love with you when it was all a ruse for you. A means to manipulate me into fighting alongside you, to bring your enemies to their knees so you could cut them down, one by one, each run of your blade through flesh a step closer to getting what you want.
“I thought, for a long while, that I was furious with you, but when I saw you that first time when Alistair attacked you, all I felt in that moment was fear. Panic seized me, all my anger suddenly overtaken by the thought of losing you, and I threw myself down that hill without a second thought. And then I hated myself for it. Foolish, I kept telling myself. So, so foolish.
“The more I was around you, the more my walls came tumbling down, no matter how desperately I tried to reinforce them. And when you told me you were sorry for what you had done, Singard, when you told me that it had been a mistake, and that your love had always been true… I believed you.”
I clutch the front of his leathers, the buckles there cold beneath my touch. “I want you. Forever. And you’re not the only one that is possessive of what is theirs, Blackheart. I am not above admitting that I am desperate for my scent to cling to you always, for the Bond to keep your every thought clouded with me, and for every female that comes near you to know that you are mine. It has never been a matter of which indiscretions I can forgive, or which parts of you I can love… It is you, Singard. Only you. And there is nothing I want more than to be your Mate.”
“You don’t know what you’re committing to, Wren,” he says, his downward eyes darkening further.
“I’m committing to you.”
He pushes off the wall, his chest pressing into mine, and his tension crowding my lungs. “You will be committing to me in the only way a human can, but it will be different for me. So much different. If I Bond you, little witch, you will never escape me. I will sense you always, feel your presence in my chest no matter your location, be able to track your scent across the entire realm. It will not matter how far you run, or how well you hide”—he places his hand across my chest, his fingertips teasing the bottom of my throat, a reminder of how easy it would be for him to grab and pin me—“I will find you. Because you will be mine, in every possible way.”
“And you will be mine,” I say with vindication. “I know what I want, Singard.”
His hand moves to sweep a lock of hair behind my ear, his fingers slowly grazing my cheek. “Where are we right now, love?” he asks, and my skin pebbles at the way he watches me, as if waiting for me to react at any moment.
I part my lips to ask what he means, but hesitate, my eyes flitting to every corner of the dank, windowless enclosure he forced me in. To the spool of chain against the far wall. A cell magicked so thoroughly that not even a seer can penetrate it—the two of us irrevocably alone, untouched by ancient magic. Unable to be… unable to be located .
Dread sinks into me, my blood turning to frost, as the reality of exactly where we are plummets into my gut.
“Cosmina,” I choke, voice breathless. I pull away and give him my back as I walk to the center of the room, looking to every corner and seeing my sister slumped there, cheeks sunken and hair matted, withering away in iron bracelets.
Destruction ignites on my fingertips. “This was her cell.”