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My eyes welled with tears. He said he wasn’t wasteful, but my cousin had that book. What had he done to get it? I swallowed a thick lump forming, not wanting to ask. I couldn’t bear the answer.
“Turns out, anyone can do it ...” He stood up, walking toward me and spinning me slightly to see the other side of the room. Clara sat on the edge of a decaying mattress, gagged, but unbound. “Though it’s much easier when you have a witch’s extra set of hands.”
Adrenaline shot through me, and with it, a tiny crack appeared in the blockage to Eres. I felt her again, and I felt a hint of her rage.
“Clara would never help you,” I said. It sounded more like a question than I would have preferred. My cousin shot a look of exasperation at me, that said “really?”
“She won’t have a choice. Did you think I would let her make that decision? Hardly. I have control over her, the same way I did Jana. The only difference is that Clara hasn’t failed me.”
I sighed. Jana. The weird reason for attacking me. She didn’t kill herself when questioned. It was all Abyssian “You poisoned Jana.”
“Not the way you think, but yes. I didn’t kill her. She’d still be alive if she’d decided to shut her mouth. Tricky how some spells work. Try to tell the truth, and you’d dug your own grave.” His eyes lit up. “Hey, you’re both gravediggers, right? Is that a pun?”
I scrunched my nose, looking at Clara while she rolled her eyes. If we ever got out of this alive, I was going to veto every man she ever found worthy of dating.
“No one was trying to poison me,” I surmised. “You hit your target the first time, and there was no way she could tell me a damned thing.”
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“Catching on, I see.” He checked the bowl collecting my blood. “Turns out Jana not killing you worked out in my favor. Having Caius’s soul returned and starting over from square one was going to be tedious. Instead, dear Clara brought the book to me thinking I could help with some of the ancient runes. Don’t be mad at her. She had no way of knowing she handed me the key to everything I’d worked toward for five thousand years. It was almost like destiny. Or fate.” He shrugged. “Either way, Clara will help because I’ll make her. You’ll die from the separation, same as every other guardian that came before you. It’s not personal, if that’s any consolation.”
I tried to work my wrist again and maybe see if I could slip it from the rope that bound them over my head, but it was no good.
“Agree to disagree. It feels pretty personal right now.” Things were still a little fuzzy from the magic he’d used on me, but more of Eres was peeking through. The downside was I could feel my blood pressure dropping from all the blood loss. By the time I got access to her, it might be too late. “So that’s your big bad plan in a nutshell. Kidnap me and bring me to a dirty hotel where you can do the ceremony and become the guardian,” I frowned, shaking my head. “Why would you even want to be one? It’s not that great.”
“You don’t know?” he asked, then scratched idly at his jaw. “Mortals aren’t meant to hold a primordial soul. It slowly kills them. A primordial can’t hold another primordial’s soul. It corrupts them. But me? I can do it.”
“Why? Why do you want it?”
“I thought it would be obvious. Caius is my half-brother. He was born a primordial, but thanks to my bastard father, I’m simply a lesser fae god. With his soul, I’ll be elevated to a primordial—as I should have been before.”
My eyebrows rose. “Power? You’re doing this forpower?” He heard the disbelief in my voice, and it confused him.
“Why else would I?”
“Villains are so unoriginal,” I muttered, shaking my head as best I could. There was no point explaining to him how fucking basic he was. Or stupid. He was born agod,and he was immortal, but it wasn’t enough? Boo–fricken–hoo. “Why now? Why didn’t you just kill me yourself?”
“After Jana failed to kill you, Caius wouldn’t let you out of his sight until now.” Abyssian sighed. “I figured I’d have to wait until your six months was up, but once it was clear you were falling for him, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. So I sped up my timeline. A few well-timed thought insertions—a good mate would encourage her to go visit her family—and poof! Here you are. With the portal between you, he can’t feel the bond or what I’m doing, but he will feel it breaking. It’s actually perfect this way. Here you are. Alone and defenseless. Almost like the universe planned for it.”
Alone? Maybe. If what he’d said about Clara was true, she wouldn’t be able to help. Defenseless? Not so much.
Even with all the blood he’d drained and the magical drug in my system, I still felt Eres. I just needed a way to free myself from my bindings and then I’d shift and let Eres handle him.
“Solid plan, human. How are we going to do it?”she said to me.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe how happy I am to hear your voice. I don’t care how you do it. Suffocate him. Stab him with your horn. Anything. You have full control. Just shift and fucking kill him the minute we can break through this drug.”
“Yes. I’m liking this plan more.”
“You underestimate me,” I bluffed. “I have Caius’s soul. I’m stronger than you.”
“Oh, you most certainly are,” Abyssian said with a laugh. “But you don’t know the first thing about how to use that power. All of that strength is just wasted on you. Much like your dark unicorn. It’s a shame I can’t take her too.”
“He can fucking try,” Eres growled.
