Her anticipation was palpable.
“You will hold the stone over him,” she purred with dark pleasure.“And you will speak these words.”
She let the pause stretch on, drinking in the tension before speaking the incantation.
“By blood and fire, by fate untold.I bind you in.I seize my hold.Through endless dark, through shifting hours, be bound within, release your power.”
I shuddered.The words felt final.A weight I would carry for the rest of my life.
“Once it is done,” she whispered like fading smoke, “I will tell you where to find me.”
Then she was gone, leaving behind only the echo of her malice.
I needed to hide it before Dalkhan could see it.
I grabbed the stone from beneath my pillow, shoving it back against my chest and left my room.
My legs moved without conscious thought, carrying me up the countless stairs to his door.I knocked, praying to the Heavens he wasn’t there.That I wouldn’t have to face him yet.
No response.
I pressed an ear to the wood, listening for any sign of movement within.
Nothing.
I slipped inside, frantically searching for a place to hide it.Every surface suddenly seemed too open, too exposed.I spun in dizzying circles, the stone burning against my skin.
Then I saw it.
A small wooden table in the far corner of the room, bearing a bowl filled with an assortment of ripe fruit.
I lunged toward it, dumping the fruit onto the floor.The stone hit the bottom of the bowl with a sharp clang.
I hastily replaced the fruit, layering it carefully until the stone disappeared.
I pressed a hand to my mouth, staring at the innocent-looking bowl.This was it.I had done it.I had just sealed his fate with my own hands.
I was a monster.
I stood frozen, trapped between the bowl and the door.Part of me wanted to rip the fruit away—to grab the stone and fling it off the balcony.But I couldn’t do anything but stare at what I had done.
When my legs remembered how to work, I fled his chambers, slamming the door shut behind me.
I walked back to my room, but my mind still circled the bowl.
Soon Mira would come to help me prepare for the feast.I would have to smile, to pretend I wasn’t drowning in my own betrayal.
I quickly bathed, crying as I brutally scrubbed at my skin, as if I could wash away the sins I had yet to commit.To make matters worse, the steam, the soap,everythingsmelled like him.Another twist of the knife already buried deep inside my heart.
The water could not cleanse me.
Nothing ever would.
Mira appeared as she always did, her movements graceful and her touch delicate.
But tonight, everything was different.
She gestured with sweeping motions as she spoke, but her words dissolved into white noise against the thundering of my pulse.
