Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sasha had to think quickly. Her door was busted in. The Dark King had arrived and he was going to search for Sidney and Virtue. He would know they’d been there. And she had nothing to show for it.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Scrambling, she turned her back to the remains of the door.
Taking a dagger out from her belt and quickly slashed it across her chest along her collarbone.
Not deep enough to cause any real harm, but deep enough to bleed.
Tossing the blade into the cauldron of used-to-be-tea-or-something on the fire, she swiveled back to the door just in time to see the Dark King begin to take shape inside her home.
His presence sent a shiver through her that wasn’t entirely fear.
“Where are they?” He was furious as he loomed up over her, his darkness filling the space and dimming the firelight around her. “Where have they—” Everything seemed to freeze as his hooded, empty visage tilted downward just slightly. He saw the blood on her collarbone.
If rage could be a physical thing, she felt it pouring from him. “The Golden Blade…?”
She could say yes. Say it was Virtue and his “Golden Blade” that had done it. But something went off in the back of her mind like alarm bells. A piece on the chessboard had just moved in front of her.
Seemingly benign.
But was it?
She could move her own piece forward blindly.
Say oh yes, it was the terrible Golden Blade, you should go out and find them, they ran out of here— But something felt…
off. Dangerous. So she retreated. Moved her own piece back.
“Pah. Hardly. Do you think I’d still be standing if that oaf used that cursed thing against me?
No, it was my own damnable dagger. Sliced myself when I fell during all the nonsense when the fool smashed my door in.
” She gestured at the remains of her entryway behind him.
“Can’t find the damn knife, now, either.” With a half-hearted laugh, she lifted her hand to touch at the cut on her chest. “Probably went off under a table or the like. I’m going to find it in the weirdest place, I’m sure…”
When she went to walk away from him, ostensibly to find something to blot at the wound with, his clawed hand quickly snatched her wrist and yanked her back to him. “They have hurt you.”
“They didn’t touch me.” She shook her head. “Wards kept them clear of even seeing me for what I really am. I fell when he kicked in the door, aren’t you listening?”
His other clawed hand lifted and hovered over the wound. “They are still to blame.”
“If you are going to kill everything that makes me trip and fall and stub my toe, you are going to be a very busy man.” She laughed. Then paused. “Demon? What are y—”
“Where are they, witch?” It seemed he wasn’t interested in playing the semantics game. “Your opportunity to claim her soul has passed. Her life is now forfeit.”
“No, that’s not fair.” She poked him in the chest. “I still get my chance at her. I’m not to blame for this.”
“You were unprepared.” He straightened his shoulders. “Weak.” He pulled her closer to him by her wrist, his free hand moving to wrap around her lower back. “Malleable.”
“I think you like it when I’m malleable, for one.” She glared up at him. And it was a long way up, at the angle she was at. “And two, is that any way to talk to your wife?”
“You still refuse my summons. This home has been proven to be just as I have warned you—unsafe. Indefensible. You must come with me to my mountain. That is where you belong.” He was so warm.
How could something so evil, so terrible, make her feel so…
damn good? His touch should horrify her.
Instead, she found herself leaning into him, wanting to feel more of his strength.
“Where I belong?” She laughed. “I would wither away in that huge, empty place. My home is here, where the ground wriggles and there is life in every speck of dust.”
“I cannot protect you here.”
The statement was as empty as a tomb. It was cold. It was only a fact, nothing more. There was no emotion behind it.
But with every ounce of her being, she wanted to ask him why?
Why do you care? Was she just another tool?
Another soldier in his army? Was their so-called marriage simply just his means of keeping her on his side?
Because that’s what she wanted? Because that’s what he knew would keep her under his thumb?
Was she really that weak? That malleable?
He was telling her the truth to her face and she was too stupid to listen.
But none of that mattered right now. What mattered was that Virtue and Sidney were somewhere underneath her floorboards, probably trying to breathe as quietly as two people who were terrified for their lives could manage.
And on her desk, sitting in a small glass bottle, was the thing that could end all of this.
The spell.
Ingredients that in this fake fictional story she knew she’d bartered, stolen, and bled for.
A formula that had taken every ounce of her fake knowledge as both a fake witch and a real woman who had read far, far too many books for her own good.
All of it distilled into a viscous, faintly luminescent liquid the color of a bruise.
It could destroy his book. The dark book. The thing that comprised the very essence of what Vile was.
And it was sitting in plain goddamn sight.
Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it. Don’t even breathe in its direction.
The Dark King’s clawed hand was still wrapped around her wrist. His other hand hovered near the wound on her collarbone, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him.
It was always like this with him—too warm, too close, too much.
Like standing next to a furnace that also happened to want to consume your soul.
“They are still to blame,” he repeated, quieter this time. The rage hadn’t dissipated. It had simply changed shape, compressing itself into something denser and more dangerous. Like a star collapsing in on itself.
“They’re gone.” She kept her voice steady.
Bored, even. As if the whole thing were a minor inconvenience and not the most terrifying fifteen minutes of her life.
“Blew through here like a pair of idiots. Once they realized I wasn’t whatever they were looking for, they just left.
Not the most thrilling home invasion I’ve ever experienced. ”
She could feel the lie sitting between her teeth like something rotten.
It tasted awful. But she’d gotten better at this.
Better at keeping her thoughts flat and unremarkable when he was close.
He couldn’t read her mind here—or at least so he said.
But that didn’t mean that the Dark King couldn’t see through her lies in the usual, fictional way that Evil Things could read through people’s normal bullshit.
His grip on her wrist tightened. Not painfully. Possessively. “Which direction?”
“East. Through the marshlands. I watched them from the window until the fog swallowed them.” The lie came easier now. She even added a dismissive wave of her free hand. “They were stumbling like drunks. The marsh will slow them, if nothing else does.”
A low sound left him. Not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. Something that vibrated in the space between human and other. “The Golden Blade will not remain in their possession for long. It belongs to me.”
“That’s your business, not mine.” She tugged lightly at her wrist. Not hard enough to actually try to free herself—that would invite suspicion—but enough to convey annoyance. “And you’re hurting me.”
He wasn’t. But it worked. His grip loosened, and his clawed fingers slid from her wrist to her hand, holding it almost gently. It was somehow worse than being grabbed.
“You are trembling,” he observed.
“You materialized out of thin air while I was trying to have a cup of tea, after my place was ransacked by a pair of heroic lunatics caught up in their own personal crusade. Trembling seems like a proportionate response.”
“Your tea.” He tilted his head toward the cauldron over the fire. “What were you brewing?”
Her heart seized.
Careful.
This was another move of the chess pieces.
“A tonic for my joints.” She gestured vaguely at her own body with her free hand.
“The damp gets into everything. And sitting hunched over a worktable for hours on end doesn’t do my back any favors, before you suggest that’s another reason I should live in your charming little mountain of doom.
I may look young, but I’m older than you, remember. ”
He said nothing for a moment. The silence stretched. Below her feet, she prayed that Sidney and Virtue were holding perfectly, absolutely, unnervingly still. One creak of armor. One sneeze from dust. One squeal because of a rat. That’s all it would take.
The Dark King released her hand and moved past her, toward the fire. Toward the cauldron.
Toward her desk.
No.
“You really don’t need to fuss over a joint tonic.” She followed after him, forcing herself not to rush. Casual. Easy. Like it didn’t matter. “Unless you’ve developed a sudden interest in herbal medicine, in which case I have a lovely book on the subject I can lend you. It’s even got pictures.”
The faintest hint of amusement bled through his fury. She couldn’t see it—his face was still that hollow, hooded darkness—but she could feel it. The way the pressure in the room shifted, just slightly. She’d learned to read him in ways that had nothing to do with sight.
He probably didn’t even have a face, honestly.
He stopped at the cauldron. One clawed hand reached out and tilted the vessel toward him, peering inside at the murky remnants of whatever the concoction had originally been. Her dagger was in there somewhere, buried under the dregs. If he found it in there…he’d have more questions.