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Malazan’s life thread swayed in the air as it called to me, the simplest of solutions presenting itself. I could end her before she ever woke, snuff out her life and be back in my room before anyone had the chance to realize I was gone.

But I didn’t know what trace that magic might leave, what might come back to me if there was no sign of violence on her body. It needed to look as if it could have beenanybody.

I touched a gloved hand to the knife I found perched atop her stack of clothing for the next day. The iron blade glinted in the light of the candle Malazan had left burning as I turned it from one side to the other, studying the craftsmanship of the blade. The hilt was carved in silver, an intricate, winding pattern of swirls adorning it. Those continued over the iron blade that was curved and wavy itself. Not a straight line, Malazan’s weapon of choice, but almost as if it mimicked the waves of the ocean.

For a brief moment, I wondered if it was the very blade she had used to cut my mate, to torture him as Mab watched. I gritted my teeth, the thought fueling me toward what needed to be done.

I stepped away from the candle, leaving it burning behind me as I focused on that cold well at my center. Darkness spread through the room, smothering the flames burning in the fireplace opposite of her bed. The room plunged into complete and total darkness, the only light shining from that one lone candle atop the table.

Striking out with Caldris’s magic, I wrapped his shadows around her mouth and the back of her head, muffling her scream as she awakened. I allowed those shadows to hold her pinned down to her bed for me.

Helpless, as I imagined my mate had been each and every time she violated him.

My face remained darkened as I approached the bed slowly, wondering if she’d raped him in this very bed. If she’d gone to his, if I’d unknowingly let him take me in the bed that had been the location of such suffering for centuries.

Her panicked eyes darted about in the darkness as I passed the end of the bed. She couldn’t see the way I could, couldn’t comprehend what was happening to her as I allowed that starlight to drift over my skin, forming tiny pinpricks of stars that I sent to linger about my body.

Her eyes widened as she tried to scream, to warn Mab that I’d escaped the prison of my room.

“Shh,” I whispered, lowering myself to sit on the side of her bed. Her chest heaved with her frantic breaths as the mattress compressed beneath my weight. “I can’t have you ruining my fun before I’ve even started.”

It pained me that she couldn’t speak, that she couldn’t spew her venom and ease the pain of letting go of that final shred of my humanity. If she reminded me of how vile she was, perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult to embrace the monster I’d never wanted to be.

“We’re going to play a game, you and I,” I whispered, trailing the tip of the blade along her chest. I cut the fabric of her nightgown away from her breasts, parting it slowly down the middle until she was nude on the bed. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you are either going to nod or shake your head. If you lie, I will take a piece of you. If you tell the truth, I will merely leave a scar.”

She shook her head, her eyes pleading as I leaned in until my face filled her vision. Nothing but the rage burning in my eyes existed for her as she held them, her lip trembling in fear.

“We shall see how long you survive when you are the victim and not the abuser,” I growled, leaning back finally.

I touched my blade to her hand where Caldris’s shadows kept it pinned to the bed. Her pinky twitched beneath the knife as she shook her head slightly.

“Did you rape my mate in this very bed?” I asked, my jaw clenched as I studied her. Her eyes flew wide, her expression panicked as she shook from side to side.

Lie.

I swallowed as I met her stare, both of us wondering if I was capable of this. I pressed the blade down, cutting through bone slowly as the mattress didn’t provide me with the resistance needed. Blood spewed from the cut as she wailed beneath the shadows keeping her quiet, and the urge to vomit rose within me.

It was one thing to see my own blood spilled. It was another to be the one to do it to a Fae who couldn’t fight back.

I shoved down the gag reflex, grimacing as I forced myself not to reveal the weakness. My hand paused, unable to push the blade deeper as I fought my own nausea. The monster within me awoke, shaking off her sleepy haze as she stood. She raised her head, her fury filling me.

She had no such qualms about bloodying the woman who’d harmed our mate.

My lips twisted into a snarl that was an echo of the sound she emitted in my throat. Pushing the blade further into her flesh, she didn’t let me wince when the finger cracked beneath the pressure—the bone cleaving before I finally cut through to the other side.

I lifted her severed pinky into my hand beside the knife, dangling it before her face before I tossed it to the side of the bed.Her screams pushed against the shadows, but they held firm. Restraining her, silencing her.

Just as Mab had done with her victims.

I moved to the second finger on her hand, positioning my knife as I repeated my question. “Did. You. Rape. My. Mate. In. This. Bed?” I asked, my voice quiet and seething as I glared down at her. My jaw clenched with the need to kill her and be done with it, but I forced myself to suffer through the knowledge of what had been done to the male I loved.

It didn’t matter that centuries had passed. Wounds like that never healed completely; they never went away. By some gift of the Gods, Caldris had survived what she’d done and become a light in the darkness in spite of it, but that didn’t mean the memory of that violation didn’t haunt him daily.

She nodded slowly, her tears drying as she met my glare with one of her own. I slashed my blade across her hand, cutting through sinew and tendon so that I could scar her skin. It wouldn’t matter by morning. She had to know that.

Beauty didn’t matter when you were dead and rotting in the ground.

“Isn’t that better?” I asked, laying the tip of my knife to the fleshy part of her stomach. She growled, the sound humming up her throat and getting muffled once it hit her mouth. “Were you the first to violate him?” I asked, hating each and every question.