Chapter 25
The little beast gasps and whirls toward the direction of my voice, her eyes landing directly on me.
I swallow the melee of confusion that hits me when I look at her, trying to connect the girl with the daggers and threats to the one curled up with an Awom boy in her memories.
I forget the human things and focus on what I have to do. Gain her trust and find out who she cares about. Between playing my role as Red and waiting for her pink spirit to leave her unattended, I haven’t been able to spy as much as I need. This window of time has to count.
“Out to see a lover?” I taunt. “Your betrothed, Jaxelli general will be so put out.”
Her eyes narrow as she pulls the hood of her cloak up over her white hair, still in the ponytail and draped over her shoulder. “How do you know who my betrothed is?”
When my only answer is a soft chuckle, she hisses, “Why don’t you go haunt someone else?”
“And miss the fun?” I say at her shoulder.
The icy wind whips her gathered, white strands out of her hood, bringing a few across her mouth. They tease her lips, sticking to the black lipstick, a color that only adds menace to the full curve of them.
Damn those lips.
“I bet you’re sneaking off to see someone tall and dark, with hazel eyes—”
She rolls her eyes and takes off running.
What is the cruel thing up to at this hour in the cold? Parts of her gold, shimmering soul whisper her desires to me as she prints away,
“. . . Earn Palko’s forgiveness . . .”
“. . . Win the King’s Duel . . .”
“. . . End the betrothal . . .”
“. . . Dae’s voice . . .”
I ignore the fact that I’m in her desires and skip to Palko. Maybe I was right about her sneaking off to see a lover. But wasn’t she just trying to kiss the prince? The monster rumbles deep inside as my thoughts float toward my ex, Kathreen, and her tendencies.
I follow, careful not to touch her memories. The ones of her and the Awom boy still won’t leave me alone, having left ghostly tracks of warmth through my mind.
I can’t have that.
She clings to the darkest shadows cast against the base of the black castle wall. The only thing giving her away is that hair of hers, the ends of which keep dancing off her shoulder from the wind.
I’m itching to delve into those honeyed memories and see exactly why she’s out here sneaking around—why she pulled the stunt with Kazem when her desires don’t want him . . . but I refrain.
Again.
Even though it’s only a matter of time until she actively thinks of a memory, then I won’t be able to stop myself from seeing it. My traitorous self buzzes with anticipation, waiting for it.
Those memories of hers are a drug to me.
She turns the corner. Her steps are quick, precise, and silent across the icy ground.
The length of the castle’s monstrous backside appears never-ending, its end invisible in the night fog, but she keeps going, brushing her hand along the black icy wall as she runs. When her hand touches the bars of the dungeon cells, she skids to a stop and crouches, cupping her hands to peer down inside.
“A thing for bad boys, I see.”
Her soul pulls on me, the soft, golden-white and smooth obsidian edges flaring around her. She turns to face me, and I don’t even notice the way those full lips are parted just so, breathing heavily from her run.
Nope. Don’t notice.
She points at me. “New rule. If you are here, you help. Find a man in one of the cells. Brown hair, has a limp.”
“So, I was right about the dark hair,” I tease.
Maybe this will be the person I can use to leverage against her. I slink down into the dungeons, which have drastically suffered in my absence. They are a filthy, uninhabitable maze of stone walls.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—they are almost all empty. I’m able to find the man and quickly return.
“Thirty-second cell from this wall.”
She starts running and counting softly as she passes each half-sunken, barred window.
“So. why am I helping instead of your bond spirit?”
“Because she’s gone, and you can’t seem to leave me alone.” She stops at the thirty-second window. “Palko?” she whispers. Time stops when I’m catapulted into her memory.
Golden light and black swirls explode in my vision as I look out from her eyes upon the courtroom throne, ordering the death sentence of Palko Everett and sending him to await execution in the dungeons.
Rage fills my every pore; the monster begins clawing and thrashing its way through me.
It loves the intense memories of souls. I try to shut out the memory and the agony ripping through it. But I’m trapped.
I watch as guards tear Palko from his wife, wrenching his weak and twisted leg. Raging anger and immense heartbreak course through me, but I can’t tell which emotion is mine and which is hers. I close my eyes, fighting the memory, fighting off the soul-shredding monster that does not see reason—
Until the vision shifts, and I’m handing over Palko’s bag of ren with her delicate hands to a conniving nobleman of the Zarr court. There are so many intense emotions I can’t process a single one, except the anger. Hers or mine, the deathwalker in me doesn’t care. It likes anger.
The monster inside me takes over, prepared to end her, to sap life from her veins. I can’t control it, can’t care about my freedom or that I won’t gain her soul this way. The monster has no logic. I materialize silently behind her and pull the black, flickering blade from the sheath on my back. My muscles coil, about to surge my blade forward until—
Another memory. I’m in her room, facing Preysee, handing a necklace to her, and instructing her to deliver it to Palko’s wife so she can use its worth to free him. My blade halts, inches from her back.
A strained cough floats up from the dungeon. “Who’s there?”
Nizzara unbuttons her top cloak and drops it through the freezing bars. “Here, take this and keep it hidden under your mat when the guards pass.” She shivers as a gust of snowy wind whips at her, then unbuttons the second one and drops it too.
Palko’s voice is raspy and weak, but I hear the hitch in his words. “Thank you.”
She sinks to her knees, her back still to me. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice cracks. “Keep holding on. Your wife is coming with payment.”
“Thank you,” Palko says. “Realms, thank you.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again, too soft for Palko to hear over the wind.
The monster slowly relents receding back to the depths of my dark soul, and I’m left frozen in the face of her. I jet back into my spirit form, knowing she will undoubtedly recognize me if she so much as turns her head.
She stands up, walking back the way we came. For a fleeting moment, her tears glisten down her flawless cheeks until the wind steers them toward her ears and dries them.
I can’t help it.
I have to know.
I dive into her memories.
Gold. Everywhere. Feeling like a life source I didn’t know I needed. I see her left alone, cross-legged on the floor while her mother reads to her sister, but not her.
I see the Awom from the library helping her learn his language, his hand reaching for hers.
I see Mazzar hugging her and telling her stories of far-off lands. I’ve never, in my whole life, witnessed that look on Mazzar’s face, but it’s here in the memory when he beholds Nizzara.
Multiple images pass by of him smiling softly at her, followed by his back-handed slaps to her face.
Glimpses fly of her first duel, her father watching, as close to the ropes as possible. He cheers as she lands her first pink-puffed dagger, like an infantry general who just claimed the sweetest victory, but when she goes to find him afterward, he’s gone.
More memories pass of them training together, him teaching her moves and techniques I’ve never seen before, all in varying degrees of brutality. In some training sessions she’s left with a lot more injuries than others.
Sprinkled through her past, I see his descent. More goblets of wine and less life in his gaze, until the first time his hand found her throat, his eyes cold and hard. Until he couldn’t control his temper enough to train with her, until his punishments turned to whips.
Her memories flood through my cold center and it takes monumental effort to close the gate again. Suddenly, abruptly, the world around me is dust compared to the intensity of her soul.
A pure soul.
Without a rotten edge to be found.