Chapter 33
ACKER
I wake with a start and immediately tense when I feel the sharp point of a blade at my throat.
Jovie looms over me, expression murderous in the light of the flickering oil lamp I left on the table in front of me in the otherwise darkened tavern.
It’s the first time I’ve looked directly at her since we stood together on her balcony in Maile.
She’s beautiful, undoubtedly, but there’s a sliver of cold calculation behind her eyes that I overlooked in the past. Cunning and devious and sly like a fox.
Her auburn hair, like a wild mane around her face, has never looked more fitting.
I attempt to lift a hand to disarm her but quickly realize I can’t because my hands are bound.
Another jerk of my wrists reveals the bite of rope into my skin, arms tied behind me, attached to the back legs of the wooden chair I’m sitting in.
Even though I knew better than to underestimate her, I’m still impressed by her stealthiness, both in breaking free and by not waking me.
“How does it feel?” she asks, yanking my hair to further expose my neck to her. “Finding out you’ve been left exposed and vulnerable while you’ve been sleeping?”
She’s furious. I can feel her anger burning down the tether. It pulses with the pace of her heartbeat. Steady and relentless, and it’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for. After her nightmare a few nights ago, I … fuck.
Fredrich thinks I don’t care about Jovie’s feelings, but nothing could be further from the truth.
When I first had to smother the Bond with the strings of mangi, it was like she was missing all over again.
The severing of my tie to her emotions felt like I’d lost my own heart right along with losing hers.
The pulse of her anger begins to beat faster.
The sensation makes me want to smile, but I swallow down the urge, throat bobbing against the sharp tip of the blade in her hand. “If your intention is to kill me, then at least be merciful enough to make it quick.”
She’s not amused. “You think I won’t?”
I definitely think she would draw it out just to spite me. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” I ask on a low breath, relishing the way her eyes track my lips as I speak. “Having me at your mercy.”
The blade pierces my skin, cutting into the place where my jaw hinges at the top of my throat, and the sight of my blood momentarily distracts her enough that I’m able to grab her shackled wrist.
She gasps.
“Did you think simple rope would be enough to hold me?” I ask, standing from the chair.
She steps back to accommodate for my size but doesn’t remove the dagger from my throat.
I hold up the severed rope, the dagger in the same hand I called into my palm while it was still tied before dropping them both at my feet, the metal blade clinking against the tavern’s floor.
I grab her wrist to hold her in place when she tries to retreat.
The action causes the blade to slide even deeper and I suck in a hiss of air through my teeth.
I can feel the trickle of heat down my neck.
Her eyes widen. “Acker.” She says my name in what I assume she intends as a warning, but the slight tremble in her hands gives her away.
“Kill me or don’t,” I tell her. “But understand: if you don’t end my life right here, right now, then know that I am never going to let you go.”
Her anger flashes through the Bond. “You’re telling me my options are only to be with you or kill you?
“No. I’m saying there’s no escaping the Bond, and if you want any chance of being free of me, you might as well kill me. My death is of little consequence.”
“This is lunacy.”
She tries to jerk her hand away, but I refuse to release her. “Aren’t you sick of fighting it?” I ask.
Her expression stills. “You don’t get to decide that.”
I lean a little closer, enjoying the way her eyes falter on the blade she has at my throat. “It’s no different than when you made me choose between you and my father.”
She becomes eerily calm in the face of my anger. “Let go of me.”
I take a moment to consider the possibility she might actually kill me before I finally relinquish my hold, undoing the mangi shackles on her wrists with a touch of my magic, and letting them, too, fall to the floor in a loud clank of metal.
Her hands immediately begin to glow, her gift revealing itself as they shake.
Her eyes flick to the blade in her hand, to the blood dripping down the hearthstone edge. Then, ever so slowly, she takes a measured step back, lowering the dagger to her side. “I see we’re at an impasse, so why don’t we negotiate for my release?”
I bite back my huff of laughter. “Even if I was willing to negotiate, I would advise you against it.”
“And why is that?” she asks, lifting a challenging brow.
“Your deal with Chryse,” I explain, wiping the dribbles of blood from my neck and chest with a wipe of my palm.
“It’s a terrible agreement.” Her glow intensifies and it’s been so long since I laid eyes on the beauty of her gift that I can’t help but admire it.
“He had no incentive to uphold his end of the bargain after you already carried the heavy lifting on your end of the deal.”
Her gaze stutters on me. “I considered it,” she says. “But Chryse knew there’d be dire consequences if he didn’t.”
“So, what was your plan if he did kill me? Start a new war after this one ended?”
“No,” she says like I’m the biggest moron to ever exist. “I was going to kill him.” She wipes the dagger clean on her pantleg. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I repeat, sarcastically.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” she snarks dryly.
I can’t believe this.
I take a step forward and dip my head, so my eyes are level with hers, which has her readying her dagger again defensively. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to thank you for anything,” I growl.
There’s a flicker of vulnerability in her gaze before it’s gone again with a blink. A hint of her true emotions underneath. “You were on the losing side of a war—”
“That you started,” I correct.
“That you allowed,” she yells back, losing any semblance of calm. “If you would have taken your father’s throne and made a new peace treaty with the Alaha, like I proposed, none of this would have had to happen.”
I can feel the shift of the metal in Fredrich’s blood as he rouses from sleep upstairs. “What did you expect me to do?” I shout back. “You had me pinned to a fucking chair and a blade to my father’s neck.”
This, out of everything, seems to suck the wind from her sails. “It was still your choice.”
The solemn and cold tone she uses hurts more than they should. Like the sharp sting of a proverbial knife long buried in my chest being wrenched free.
I take a step back, needing distance. “How dare you put all of this on me.”
She shakes her head. “Oh, I’ve blamed myself plenty.”
Eyes full of regret, she looks up at me at the same time Fredrich’s footsteps sound on the stairs and continues. His head peeks from around the banister before fully entering the tavern’s main room.
“All good down here?” he asks.
I’m slow to turn away from Jovie after that revelation, but I eventually meet Fredrich’s gaze. His eyebrows are raised with a mixture of concern and exasperation.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Give us a few.”
He looks at Jovie for confirmation that she must answer with a nod. I grit my teeth, annoyed that my word wasn’t enough alone, but keep it to myself as he says to holler if we need anything. It’s a thinly veiled offer to the both of us. Whoever screams first, I guess.
Alone again, Jovie steps toward me as I turn back to face her.
I eye the dagger still in her hand.
“Why am I here, Acker?” she asks.
Aside from the fact that I was always planning on coming to get her, I say, “Greta had a vision.”
As hard as I try to not let my worry seep through, I must do a terrible job because her eyes narrow. “What did she tell you?”
“She believes my father is going to win the war.”
Confusion creases her brows. “She would have sent word to Beau if she thought it necessary,” she argues.
“Would she?” I challenge. “Think of all the deaths she would have seen in that vision. Yours, mine. Her own daughter’s. Your mother’s, my mother’s. Who do you think takes precedence?”
“Greta—”
“Believes the future is inevitable, laid out by the gods, so why would she try to alter it by warning anyone, regardless of how much she loves them?”
It’s this piece of information that causes the tension to melt out of Jovie, her shoulders drooping as the truth slowly sets in. Her glow begins to dim as the fight leaves her. “Then there’s nothing we can do,” she says.
“How can you say that?”
She stares at the blood drying on my shirt before her eyes lose their focus. “You can’t stop fate, Acker.”
Grabbing her by the face, I force her eyes on me. “I refuse to accept that. I’ll fight fate itself if it means I can right my wrongs.”
“Acker—”
I slam my mouth onto hers in an effort to shut her up, and she surprises me by immediately accepting the kiss.
Her easy submission drags a guttural groan from my throat.
She swallows the sound with the same eagerness.
I relish the warmth lingering on her skin from her diminishing light, her radiance dancing behind my eyelids.
Each drag of my tongue against hers, each breath of hers I take in as my own, I let the tether reveal my darkest secrets to her.
The love I’ve been harboring. The obsession I’ve struggled to keep in check. The suffering I’ve endured at her hands.
I let her see and feel it all.
She gasps from the onslaught of emotions, tearing herself away from the kiss.
I don’t let her get far, hand cradling the back of her head to keep her within the circle of my arms. “Help me end this,” I insist. I’m not even sure what I’m asking. To end this war. My pain and suffering at her hands. “Put me out of my misery.”
Feeling her trepidation through the Bond, it makes me want to shake her, but I know it would be counterproductive.
It’d likely only instigate another row. So I kiss her again, instead.
She’s less receptive this time, mouth stilted against my movements, and when I pull away I’m disheartened to see the tears welling in her eyes.
With her hands against my chest, she presses until I let her go.
“I can’t,” she says, voice barely a whisper.
I don’t know if it’s in reference to the kiss or my plea for her to fight for me, for her own life, but the way she tightens the grip on her dagger has me taking a step back.
Then another, until I’m no longer forcing my legs to move, and I’m able to walk out the door of the tavern without doing something stupid.
Like actually let her kill me.