He swallowed, shaking his head as though he couldn’t bring himself to tell me.
My hands began to shake. A burn lashed at the back of my eyes. “What about everything you wanted?" I demanded. "What about Rivea? What about your escape?”
Knuckles bloodied, Pheolix tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Do you not understand, Selena?Youare my escape.”
My mouth opened and closed as his lashes fluttered shut. His thumb coasted to a stop on the ridge of my ear. A black vein threaded into the side of his jaw, reaching toward his mouth.
“Bring him here,” Thaan said.
Pheolix didn’t move as they grabbed him by the legs, pulling him to Thaan, letting his bare chest and face drag over hard rock.
I climbed upright, fire suddenly roaring in my ears. Every shift in my body burned. “Flush him,” I demanded. “Flush his blood.”
“Lay him flat. Face-down,” Thaan said, ignoring me.
The drones obeyed, two of them stretching Pheolix’s arms out from his sides, pinning his shoulders with a knee.
A third stepped forward, an iron rod in his hands. The end of it glowed orange, vibrant against the night sky. He pressed it between Pheolix’s shoulder blades. Flesh sizzled, breaking the silence suspended around us. Pheolix’s eyes shot open, but he didn’t say a word.
I bared my teeth. “Flush his blood."
“Get him to his feet,” Thaan ordered the drones.
“THAAN,” I thundered.
He finally turned to me as the drones hoisted Pheolix up, guiding him away through the mountain trees. "He'll live."
“If you want to control me so much, why even use Pheolix?” I snarled. “Why not just demand my blood? Commandme?”
Thaan crouched in front of me. Even with the salt and pepper in his hair, he almost looked young in the moonlight. “That would disrupt our little game, wouldn’t it? Besides, we both know you’d refuse to vow yourself to me.” He tilted his head. “Where’s Cebrinne?”
“I’ll kill you,” I murmured. “I swear it on my blood.”
Cuts across the pads of my fingers. Tiny lacerations along the side of my face. A hard knot over my eye, an open stitch in my lip. A crack of light, and they all burned smoothly, locking my vow into my body.
Surprise raised his brows, but Thaan’s mouth twitched, a rare spark of humor twinkling in his eye. “If you someday manage that feat, my dear, nothing would make me more proud. But we both know you won’t. We both know you’ve had the chance for over a decade, sleeping in the rooms beside mine. We both know you’re a coward, too afraid of what would happen if you failed. Where’s your sister?”
Suddenly, a twitch tugged at my mouth, too. A calm wave of madness rolled over me like a gush of wind. “Pheolix doesn’t know where she is. And I swore on my blood I’d never tell." I leaned in, glaring into his eyes. "You’ll never find her. She has three years of life, of freedom far from you, and you’ll never take that from her. I will be the one who grants you death.”
He didn't even blink. I held up my hand, letting him see the embers of my promise as they faded into my skin. “When the day comes that you finally die, it will be this hand that kills you.”
60
Cebrinne
When you get there, let yourself be picky. Don’t just settle for the first pair of island eyes you see.
My mouth twitched as I remembered my final parting with my sister. How I’d done the one thing she’d forbidden.
I’d tried to take her suggestion. The island men were so different here from the lords in Calder. Rather than antlers on their walls or titles after their names, their bodies boasted their mettle. Strong and decorated with tattoos for every badge of honor the island bestowed them. They worked hard. They laughed hard. They poured love into everything they did, from fishing and gardening to the simplest of tasks, counting stars or telling sweeping stories around a fire.
The sheer depth of love for everything had been foreign at first. Almost taboo. Like I’d wandered into a place I didn’t belong. Didn’t deserve.
The village doctor, Akamai, had let me stay in her little house. At first, the islanders waited for me to board a ship home. When a month passed and I still hadn’t, the men began to dawdle when they passed her veranda, offering to leave her the day’s catch and asking if she needed aid repairing her underground oven.
“You better choose one soon,” she chuckled one night, unfolding crispy fish from a banana leaf. “My stores are full, and my house is cleaner than it’s been in years. I have nothing to do during the day but watch the water beat its head against the rocks. Soon, I’ll be beating my head there, too.”
I smiled, halfway through a basket the old woman had shown me how to weave, and my gaze lifted to the center of the market.
