Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Time to roll the dice.
Malechus is no longer smiling. The crowd gasps. And the bride looks ready to flee.
She can’t escape now. I still need her to play her part.
I move to Sift, even as someone screams, but Keir snatches my wrist, searching my gaze. “What did you do?”
I try and pry him free, but there’s no shifting him. “I took care of Belladonna’s threat.”
“You killed him?”
“I just need Belladonna to think I’ve killed him,” I whisper in his ear. “Let me go. I need to finish this. I need to fetch the horn.”
“You were supposed to wait for me. If they realize you’re gone—”
“They won’t. Because you’re going to summon an illusion of me,” I whisper. “Make it look real.”
He stares at me.
“Please.”
“And the questing beast?” he finally asks.
“I have a plan. Trust me.”
Keir’s lips thin, but he waves his finger.
A cloaked figure bumps into me and an elegant young woman steps between us, whipping back the hood of her cloak.
It’s… a little shocking to stare myself in the face. I have to assume no one can see the real me.
“Make sure I’m seen,” I tell him. “Make sure you’re seen.”
I can’t have him interrupting my plans, after all.
And then I take a step back into the shadows, even as Keir shoots me an absolutely furious look.
He’s going to make me pay once this is all said and done, but I have to finish what I started.
Distraction gets you dead. Put Keir out of your mind and focus.
I bury him so deep in my heart that those treacherous longings will never see the light of day again. And then I Sift toward the side of the amphitheater.
There’s a hooded figure in one of the side chambers, pacing the floor like a caged wolf. The second I enter, she stills, those malevolent green eyes locking upon me. “Well?”
“It’s done,” I tell Belladonna.
“He’s dead?” she demands.
I gesture over my shoulder to where Malechus and his men are desperately trying to revive the Lord of Mistmark. “If you wait ten minutes, he will be. But I don’t think we have the time.”
“Just break the curse,” Anissa murmurs from where she’s slumped against the wall. “Let’s be done with this. Let’s be done with all of this. I just want to go home, Bella. No more murderous games. No more blackmail and curses. I want our life back. You, me, and our sunny pavilion by the lake.”
Eagerness leaps in my heart, but this isn’t the moment to reveal it.
Belladonna stares at me, before her gaze cuts to the side.
She doesn’t say a thing, but I know—if she gets her way and Malechus dies—that she and Anissa won’t be returning to what sounds like their summer retreat.
The Blood Lily is ambitious. I can’t forget the hunger in her eyes when I spoke of Malechus’s death.
Without a crown prince, the path to the throne is open, and maybe Belladonna’s tired of dancing to someone else’s tune.
But that’s their problem.
Not mine.
“Fine.” Belladonna yanks me toward her, wearing an exact replica of the bridal gown.
I don’t know whether she’s wearing the illusion, or Soraya is.
They both look like they required several hundred hours of stitching each, which makes Soraya’s gifts of glamor impressive.
I knew she was good, but I didn’t know she was this good.
Belladonna’s fingers curl into shadowy claws, and then she strikes at my chest.
I gasp as I feel them sinking within me.
My heart throbs in her grasp, but it’s the curse that drives me to my knees as she wraps her hand around it and wrenches it from my chest.
“I told you we didn’t have to be enemies,” Belladonna purrs as she curls her fingers around the wretched black tangle that writhes in her palm. It sinks into her skin and vanishes, and I can finally breathe again.
Yeah, well…. “That was before you tried to kill me.” Somehow I make it back to my feet. The curse is gone. Gone. I’m free of her entanglements.
There’s a strange look in her eyes. “Sometimes I react hastily when the people I love are threatened.”
“That’s her way of saying thank you,” Anissa murmurs as she captures her lover’s hand. There’s a relieved smile on her face. “And we do. We both thank you. Without you, there would be no hope for us.”
One look at Belladonna reveals the haughty cock of her brow. She’s not that grateful. Or maybe she just has difficulty conceding it.
“Long live true love,” I tell her, bending over and panting as I try to recover. “And you’re welcome. Now go. The pair of you need to play your parts.”
Drawing her hood over her gorgeous mahogany hair, Belladonna arches a brow. “Your friend’s glamor is ridiculously good.”
“It almost fooled me,” Anissa grumbles.
“Don’t tell her that.”
Belladonna smiles that little smirk I hate so much. “You do realize my dearest cousin is going to try and torture her?”
“He can try. I don’t think she’ll appreciate that.”
“As long as the truth comes out.”
“Well, that’s where you have to play your role,” I point out.
She rolls her eyes and stalks toward the door. “Where the fuck are my flowers? If I’m going to do this, then I’m going to do it right.”
Anissa grabs the bunch of night-blooming lilies and hands them to her.
“You breathe a word of this,” Belladonna tells me, “and I’ll ruin you. I can curse you again just as easily as breathing.”
I roll my eyes, but Anissa pokes her in the ribs. “Bella!”
“Thank you,” Belladonna says stiffly.
The last thing I see is the excited flash of Anissa’s smile. In her eyes, once Malechus dies, they’re finally free to live their lives the way they choose. No more political marriages bound to separate them. Without Malechus trying to drive a wedge between them, they may love each other openly.
The second they’re gone, I breathe a sigh of relief and allow myself a moment to lean back against the wall.
The first part of the plan succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.
Now Belladonna needs to make her entrance and make it clear she had nothing to do with the attempted assassination. She’ll be shocked. Speechless. Then furious as she demands to know who this imposter is.
The fun begins when she realizes I’m the one using her as a pawn—and not the other way around.
Phase two of the plan needs to be set in place.
I have a horn to find.
A fae lord to revive.
And then a sister’s rage to quell.
Soraya is going to kill me once she realizes what I’d failed to mention.
After all, the ceremony wasn’t fake. Not even I dare circumvent something while the goddess is watching, and it doesn’t matter what names they gave if their blood is bound.
Mistmark just found himself married to the wrong woman.
* * *
SORAYA
“Let go of me!” My skirts hiss around my legs as the prince of the Court of Blood drags me into a side chamber.
Malechus shoves me through the door and slams it behind him, locking us away from the curious guests. “Are you out of your mind? What have you done? You’ve cost us everything!”
“Cost you,” I point out, taking a step away from his towering rage.
“Cost us,” he hisses, advancing upon me.
“Cost this entire fucking court. We cannot afford to go to war with Mistmark. I gave my word to Anwar of the Court of Storms that nothing would go awry. And now the fucking Lord of Mistmark is dead! His fae will arm themselves for war, and that frigid fucking wraith he has up his sleeve will come after me!”
I can’t help myself. “Ooops.”
He freezes. “What did you say?”
I shrug. Sometimes it’s best not to say anything at all. Besides, if I wasted my breath on words, I wouldn’t be able to sit back and watch a thousand furious emotions dance across his face.
And then his expression stills, his rage sliding off him like he’s locked it away. “You don’t care. You knew the risks associated with this—that Anissa would pay the price of your insubordination. But you don’t care.”
What can I say? That my cold dead wraithen heart would bleed for the two lovers—soon to be torn apart—but it turned to ice so long ago it barely beats anymore.
“But my cousin would care,” Malechus says, and suddenly he’s a hound on the scent of its prey. “Belladonna would die for Anissa. She would prostrate herself at my feet if it meant she could stop me from cutting her lover’s heart out of her chest.”
He’s figured it out.
Now to lure him closer.
“She would,” I purr.
“Who are you?” he demands, his dark eyes glittering as he snatches at my upper arm. “For you’re not my cousin.”
I let the glamor I’ve been holding dissolve, and it feels like I step out of Belladonna’s skin. The discarded glamor settles around my ankles like a shed snake skin, before it wisps into nothingness. “You’re right. I’m not. Remember me?”
Oh, this moment feels good.
His eyes widen even as I summon my dirk. The goblin-forged metal materializes in my hand, and before Malechus can recover from his shock, I drive it into his side. Right between the fourth and fifth ribs.
It’s the best way to a man’s heart, after all.
And it takes care of any nasty surprises like blood curses. They’re difficult to conjure when you’re trying to stop your arteries from gushing like a scarlet fountain.
His fingers dig into my arm, and we both go to our knees in a semblance of an embrace.
“Do you remember when you put me in that sarcophagus?” I whisper, caressing his face. “And I promised I would make you pay?”
“How… did you…?”
“Get free?” I purr. “I had a little help from an old friend.”
Malechus’s fingers snatch at the gossamer of my skirts. From the wheeze hissing between his ribs, it sounds like I might have hit a lung. Excellent. I slide the dirk free, and trail my bloody fingers over his lips.
“Shhh,” I whisper. “This won’t take long.”
Rage ignites in his eyes. He coughs blood. Definitely a lung.
I kiss him, painting the poison across his mouth—just in case he actually can heal the knife wound—and then I ease to my feet.