Page 47 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

46

Kat

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

Just one question screeched its way through my mind over and over.

Why isn’t he dead?

Cyrus narrowed his eyes at me like he was trying to figure me out. “I wondered if you would go through with kissing me in front of him. That’s why I made Elthea give me a supply of the antidote. This felt like a good time to take it, especially after seeing the state you left your poor uncle in.”

The antidote. To my poison. I couldn’t hurt him.

On the balustrade, my groping hands found something that turned my stomach. I flinched away from the sudden silence.

Iron. The bracelet.

I forced myself to grab it and rammed the open end upward, aiming for his throat.

He caught my wrist and squeezed until my grip spasmed and the bracelet clinked to the tiled floor. “Now, now, pretty, naughty little thing.” He shook his head like he was scolding a pet. “Even when you fucked me, you were doing it just to get close to me, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t fuck you,” I spat out. If I was about to die, at least I’d disabuse him of that notion. I’d screwed him in as many ways as I could, but never like that.

“Ah. I suppose I should’ve known.” He laughed, holding up a warning hand as Bastian started towards us. “I still have hold of her, Bastard. Any closer and she dies.”

Sighing, Cyrus shook his head. “The little disappearances. The way you refused your uncle’s gift of a fertility potion—I assume he wanted you to use it, then kill me off once the heir was assured. So many little signs. I had an inkling you might not be all you portrayed, but I didn’t want to believe it… not until I had that report from the guards. Don’t you think fae know the difference between the sounds someone makes when they’re touching themselves and the ones they make when they’re being fucked?”

My chest was going to explode. There wasn’t enough space for my lungs to gasp in this much air and for my heart to flutter so erratically. He’d found us out. He knew.

“I thought your little indiscretion was with Caelus—after all, they told me you’d also gone to the hot springs with him. But the poor fellow got all the blame with none of the pleasure, didn’t he? I wondered when I saw the way this one looked at you when I marked your precious little body. So I took the antidote, just in case you were still holding a place in your heart for the Bastard of Tenebris. And thank the Sun and Stars I did.”

His head snapped around to Bastian. “You. You .” He spat it out like a curse. “You killed the woman I loved, and now I have the woman you love. Such poetry. It will soon become a tragedy if I make her past tense, won’t it?”

“Sura,” Bastian breathed. “All this is about Sura .”

I understood now. His hatred of Bastian was rooted in vengeance. Kaliban—that was why Cyrus had beheaded him, giving him the same death as Sura.

On the edge of my vision, Bastian lunged, shadows surging with him.

With a jerk of Cyrus’s chin, light blazed between us, burning even in my periphery. Bastian’s cry lanced through me, and I yanked against Cyrus.

“You don’t get to say her name.” He finally released my wrist now my hand had gone tingly and weak. Instead he held me by the throat. “And you don’t get to escape. She tried to kill me, Bastian. You saw her and you can’t deny it.”

I managed to glance over, braced to find Bastian burnt, but his skin was fine. On hands and knees, he felt his way closer, blinking as his gaze shifted, never quite resting on us. Cyrus had blinded him. I choked in his hold, reaching out for the shadows rippling across the floor, like they might see for him.

“You should be worrying about yourself, naughty little thing.” He bent me back over the balustrade until I couldn’t bend any further and my feet lifted from the ground.

I sucked in a breath and tried to hook my heels around the decorative stone. “Please, Your Majesty, I didn’t mean to. It was charm.” I held up my wrist, no iron clamped around it. “Without the bracelet, I?—”

“You really are a devious little bitch, aren’t you?” He laughed right in my face, blocking out the sky above. “It’s a pity you weren’t born fae—you’d have been perfect.”

“Let her go,” Bastian bellowed, working his way closer.

“Oh, I will.” Cyrus smiled, pushing me further, further.

He was going to push me over the edge. He’d watch me fall and see if I was going to disintegrate or if only bits of me would disintegrate.