Page 55

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

“ U m, wow,” Cassandra whispered, her blood pumping, as Tristan unfurled his wings in the private room.

Tristan’s hand was at his waistband, making adjustments, and Cassandra snickered.

“What?” he asked, innocently. “She’s a really good dancer.”

Cassandra couldn’t disagree. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off Mireille when she’d slunk in here with the Koenig, sat him in the leather chair, and slithered across his body for what felt like an hour.

For the grand finale, Mireille had licked her magenta lips, activating the somnothian root and lethaphyll extract within her lipstick, then given the Koenig a sloppy, tongue-filled—on her end, at least—kiss.

That had been seconds ago and both Fae were out, Aedelmar slumped in his chair and Mireille collapsed at his feet.

Cassandra pulled out the antidote Mireille had crafted, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and poured the thick amber liquid into her mouth.

Mireille came to immediately, goosebumps pebbling her skin as her eyes dilated. She gripped Cassandra’s forearms, deep fear darkening her eyes. Reliving some private nightmare. She calmed when she recognized Cassandra, who stood and helped her up. Tristan was a looming, concerned presence behind Aedelmar.

“He looks so much… smaller than I expected,” Cassandra said.

Mireille snorted. “Most males do.”

“Hey,” Tristan protested.

Cassandra blew him a kiss. “Never you, Birdman.”

The Koenig’s breathing was deep and slow, but extract-induced unconsciousness hadn’t softened his face like real sleep might have. He looked tense, his eyes roving madly behind his lids. Like he might spring to life at any moment.

“Is he supposed to look like that?” Cassandra asked.

Mireille pinched her lips together. “Be quick. He won’t remember anything when he wakes up. But I have no idea how long that will be. You need to be out of here by then. I’ll give him another dance, then take him back into the main room.”

“Where’s Wormwood’s office?” Tristan asked Mireille.

“Left out this door, then up the back staircase. Second door on the right.”

Tristan wrapped himself in his wings, shook his feathers, and disappeared.

“I will never get used to that,” Mireille said, blinking. She eased open the door, ducked her head out, then pulled back in. “All clear.”

Tristan shot a hand through his feathers, giving them a thumb’s up.

Mireille waited a beat for him to exit, then closed the door and turned to Cassandra. “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’m going to be.”

Cassandra glanced down at the Koenig, temptingly vulnerable with his bare chest exposed and the kohl cleaned from his eyes. She wished she had a weapon. Typhon steel, a shard of glass, a stone spike. Anything that she could plunge into his heart and end him right here, right now.

The mere thought sent a jolt of pain through her veins. Even if she’d been armed, the blood vow wouldn’t allow her to harm him.

Cassandra leaned down to whisper into Aedelmar’s ear, to encourage the memory she sought to the surface.

Before she opened her mouth, she glanced over to Mireille one final time, who sent her a determined nod of encouragement.

“Tell me the dragon’s name,” Cassandra whispered.

Then closed her eyes, grasped the Koenig’s hand, and let the memory wash over her.

Aedelmar had failed.

He’d utterly failed.

How could he have been so stupid? To leave her here alone while he and his men had rushed to save that village? He should have known it was a trap from the moment that messenger had arrived.

But his warriors were spoiling for a fight after a week of unexpected calm in this on-going war against Leonin Erabis’s Imperial designs.

Aedelmar’s own clan—the Cynn Drakan—was the last hold-out in the northwest continent. And they would not be as easily taken as the others.

Though his certainty faltered as Arran Zephyrus paced before him. Aedelmar knelt on the floor, held up by two of Arran’s soldiers. His jaw ached, his ribs smarted, and a trickle of blood ran down his chest where they’d slashed him with his own Typhon dagger.

He wanted to rip from their grasp and shred the room to pieces. But he didn’t dare.

Not when two of Arran’s other males were holding Priya at knifepoint on the bed. Terror brightened her eyes, but she kept perfectly still. Didn’t cry or beg or wail for her freedom.

Creator, she was so brave. One of the many reasons he’d chosen her as his mate.

His clan had been against their coupling in the beginning. Wanted a Windrider for their queen. But Priya, a bear bi-form, had won them over with her skilled hunting, her shrewd mind, her bawdy sense of humor. Plus her ability to drink every single one of his clansmales under the table. He was quite sure a number of them were just as hopelessly in love with her as he was.

She’d helped him hold the Cynn Drakan together during these past months of battle with the conquerors. They had argued bitterly about her marching into battle alongside him. He did NOT want her putting herself in danger. One of them needed to survive.

He almost laughed at the irony now. The danger had come for her anyway. Right into their marriage bed.

“So,” Arran drawled, his braided copper hair glinting in the moonlight, “it seems we are at an impasse.”

Aedelmar grunted, and a soldier grabbed his bruised jaw and forced his chin up.

Arran plucked a small flute from his pocket, barely larger than a finger, and made a show of examining it. “Do you know how many times I have used this? Take a guess.”

Aedelmar said nothing, and the soldier dug a finger into an open gash beneath his ribs. He hissed in pain, Priya snarling from the bed. “Answer him,” the soldier growled, twisting his finger into the wound.

Aedelmar released a pained laugh, tasting blood on his tongue. “You could blow it ten thousand times and she would never come to you.”

Arran nodded, flattening his lips. “You’d think I would have learned after the fiftieth or even the hundredth try that it wasn’t going to work. But, what’s that saying?” Arran directed the question to the soldier on Aedelmar’s right, the one whose finger still gouged his side.

The soldier answered immediately, a pet wanting to please his master. “Hope springs eternal.”

Arran snapped. “That’s the one. Hope springs eternal. Yes, it certainly does.” Arran’s flinty steel eyes clapped onto Aedelmar’s. “But not for you, I’m afraid.” The two soldiers dragged Priya from the bed, then forced her to kneel beside her husband.

She turned to him, her pleading gaze begging him not to give in. She was a fool if she thought he had a choice. If the cost of her survival was his life, then he’d pay it a thousand times over.

“Your hope ends, but I will offer you one last piece of agency,” Arran said, his dusty brown boots clacking across the floorboards. “Tell me the creature’s name, and you will be the only one who dies tonight. Refuse, and I’ll kill your mate instead.”

Creator bless her, Priya steeled her shoulders and spat at Arran’s feet. “He’ll never give it to you.”

Arran tapped a finger against his lips, his gaze trained on Aedelmar. “There are other ways I could wrench it from you, you know. Slowly and painfully, one strip of skin at a time. But that would require time that I do not have.” Arran nodded at his soldiers and the tips of Typhon daggers appeared at both Aedelmar and Priya’s hearts.

Priya strained against the soldiers’ grips. As if trying to tear her hands away to protect him .

It shattered his resolve.

“Stop,” he whispered, “I’ll tell you.”

“No!” Priya shouted, agonized. “Do you really think this monster will treat the Cynn Drakan honorably? If we lose her, our way of life is over. There will be no coming back from this. If you damn our people to save me, I will never forgive you.”

His heart split as he took in his fierce, beautiful mate. This female he’d loved for decades. This female who’d helped him lead the Cynn Drakan, helped him keep Arran at bay. Arran, who was about to take everything from him.

Everything except Priya.

Aedelmar was strong, but not strong enough to survive that.

He poured all his love into his gaze. “My life is worth nothing without you. You must live.”

Priya remained dry-eyed, even as tears bathed his own cheeks.

“So touching,” Arran sneered. “I assume you’ve made your choice?”

He nodded once, sharply, ignoring Priya’s bellowing protests.

“Muzzle the bitch,” Arran bit out and a soldier clapped a hand over her mouth while the other maintained the dagger at her heart.

Aedelmar did not break his mate’s gaze as Arran leaned down, so close their faces were nearly touching.

Aedelmar considered it for a moment. Smashing his forehead into the asshole’s nose. Giving Arran a little taste of pain before the end.

But he couldn’t muster the strength to do it. His fight was gone. He’d been bested. And now, he would bargain the only treasure he had left.

“Well?” Arran whispered. “The name. Now. Or she dies.”

He blew out a long breath, then whispered into Arran’s ear, to low for anyone else in the room to hear. “Her name is Signys.”

Arran slid his eyes closed, shuddering with pleasure, as Priya wailed. A wicked smile formed beneath his long, copper beard as he stood. “Thank you, my old foe. You made the right decision.”

He tucked the flute back in his pocket, and Aedelmar waited for the dagger to bite into his flesh. He brushed his fingers against Priya’s. A final apology, though he regretted nothing.

Arran stalked to the door, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Unfortunately, you took too long to arrive at your decision. Pity.” Arran nodded to the soldier holding Priya.

And Aedelmar’s chest caved in as the soldier plunged the Typhon steel into Priya’s heart.

His mate didn’t make a sound as she turned toward him. And there was nothing accusatory in her stare, just deep, profound love as the light drained from her eyes.

Aedelmar roared, a volcano of agony erupting in his veins. He flared his wings, straining against the soldiers holding him. He tried to summon the wind, to tear the breath from these bastards’ lungs, but the nessite chain around his neck prevented it.

“You fucking lying bastard, ” he bellowed.

Arran shrugged. “Didn’t lie. Just changed my mind. Also, I’m assuming she knew the dragon’s name as well. Can’t really have that now, can I?” Arran nodded to his soldiers again, and one pried Aedelmar’s jaw open as the other dug fingers into his mouth, pinching his tongue. “You won’t be able to tell anyone either, once they’re done with you.”

Aedelmar bit down on the soldier’s fingers, tried to clamp his jaw shut. But the male was strong, and Aedelmar was fighting the greatest fatigue he’d ever known. Arran Zephyrus had destroyed his entire world in the span of seconds.

Aedelmar slid his gaze to Priya, who lay motionless at the other two soldiers’ feet. Her life’s blood drained away, seeping through the floorboards.

He sagged within the soldiers’ hold, no energy left to do anything other than await his own death in the Eternal Fire to which all souls returned.

Aedelmar kept silent as the soldier gripped his tongue. Barely felt the pain when the other soldier began slicing through the muscle. Blood gushed into his mouth, choking him. It was not a quick, nor a clean, cut.

The soldiers released him and he crashed to the floor, nothing more than a sack of bones.

“The wings, too,” Arran said. “Then throw him in the wagon with the others. Leonin can decide what to do with him.”

Aedelmar wondered why Arran didn’t just kill him. Zephyrus had gotten exactly what he wanted. In the cruelest way possible.

But there was his answer.

It was far crueler for Arran to let Aedelmar live with the choice he’d just made.

Aedelmar barely even felt the steel as the soldiers began sawing off his wings. He lay on the floor, his empty eyes traveling under the bed to where Lizbeth lay, hand clenched around her mouth and eyes red-rimmed.

His last movement before pain stole his consciousness was to place a single finger upon his blood-soaked lips, encouraging his daughter to stay silent.

She was the Cynn Drakan’s last hope. If she lived, she could avenge her parents, her people. Someday.

She didn’t know the dragon’s name. Arran, the bastard, had guessed correctly. No one in Ethyrios save Aedelmar and Priya knew it.

But if Lizbeth lived, perhaps the memory of this terrible night could forge her into something.

The weapon that would finally excise Arran Zephyrus from this world.

As soon as Cassandra, looking through Aedelmar’s eyes, had seen his young daughter under the bed, that piercing sensation stole her breath and she jumped into the girl’s present.

Or at least, what Cassandra assumed was her present.

All Cassandra could sense around Lizbeth Burkhardt was darkness. Soft, endless darkness.

It was different than the solid wall of white that Cassandra had encountered in Selene’s present. Different than the diaphanous haze of Gareth’s present in the Halfway.

Perhaps Lizbeth was asleep. A deep, dreamless sleep.

Cassandra savored the stillness, especially after that horrific memory. She felt the smallest twinge of sympathy for Aedelmar.

Something stirred Lizbeth’s mind. A rap on a door. A clipped voice. An opened window letting in a damp, fresh scent…

Before Lizbeth woke fully, a hand shook Cassandra’s shoulder and her eyes popped open.

“The somnothian extract is wearing off,” Mireille hissed as she pulled Cassandra to her feet and pushed her from the room. “Go. Go . I’ll meet you back at the shop.”

Cassandra snuck through the back hallway of World’s End, then out the door, hoping that Tristan had learned something from those ledgers and that Ronin had been able to shake Wormwood.

As she walked back to the apothecary, she couldn’t stop thinking about Aedelmar’s memory.

The Koenig was a monster.

But it was the Empire who’d turned him into one.