I hadn’t realized…I had made a terrible mistake by forging a deal with this witch. But there was no going back now.
“Your disguise will hold another week.” The witch examined the needle she’d buried in my arm before licking the trace of my blood from its tip with quiet satisfaction. “But that’s the last time. She’s gone to the underworld. Best make her sacrifice on your behalf count.”
I collapsed into the dirt-covered bench across from her willow trunk throne, my head spinning. The cold from the pit still clung to my marrow, making the garden’s warmth feel artificial. I was Ilyana again, but the disguise felt heavy and wrong, like wet wool clinging to my skin.
“Time to uphold your side of our bargain.” Adelaide settled into her seat and called for tea. Her eyes glittering with expectation. “So tell me, how goes your grand revenge?”
I swallowed against the rising bile; the taste of the underworld still lingered in my mouth. Feeding her my doings as entertainment was last in my priorities. “Just…give me a moment,” I murmured.
She dipped her chin. A new puppet creature brought out the tea service, this one resembling a warthog.
“Cris is gone, then?” The unsettling creature fumbled the tray with its hooves. I moved to help it set the service on the table.
“Oh, yes, unfortunately. He didn’t suffer as much as I wanted him to, but now he’s getting to know real punishment in the afterlife,” Adelaide responded breezily. She poured me a cup and slid it over. “Snake’s tongue and knotweed today.”
I took a sip. Disgusting, of course. I took another, desperate for the hot liquid to scald away some of the chill trying to overtake me from the inside out. The tea’s aftertaste was minty, leaving my breath colder than when I’d started.
Reluctantly, I began sharing my news. I wouldn’t get to leave until I fulfilledthis chore. “The second trial is complete. I captured an assassin from the House of Whispers to present to the flask. It accepted him.”
“An assassin.” Her smile widened. “How deliciously ruthless. And how many have you sent back to the dirt, half-breed child?”
“I killed Fiorella Bernard. Lorelei’s dead, along with her Devotion. There have been others, but I never learned their names. Oh, and Genevieve too, though that wasn't by my hand.” I touched my throat, the phantom sensation of Ilyana’s frostbite still stinging. Or perhaps it was the damned still trying to drag me down with them into that abyss of mud and darkness.
“But you’re not sorry she’s gone.” Adelaide tilted her head, her eyes tracing the movement of my fingers. Her eyes creased a little more at the corners.
“No.” I dropped my hand, my jaw tightening as I met her gaze with a frigidness that felt borrowed from the pit.
Adelaide’s laugh burst forth. “Honesty! It is a rare vintage in this garden. Most girls try to wrap their murders in lace and excuses, but you? You wear your sins like a shroud.” She leaned back, her eyes gleaming with approval and hunger. “Sentimentality would ruin you. Now tell me, how many candidates remain?”
“Six. Including me.”
“Five more obstacles between you and the crown.” She studied my face with unsettling intensity. “Can you do it, Sidney? Can you kill five more vampires in seven days?”
The question weighed heavily in my chest. Felicity’s face flashed through my mind. “I have to.”
And if the third trial didn’t happen soon, I would need to kill my competitors in their beds, just as they feared. One week was so little time.
If I didn’t stand alone with the Flask by the week’s end,the competition would end with a dirty-blooded dhampir where a vampiress should be, and they would tear me apart for the lie.
I turned over my hands. The frost-scored blisters on my palms had faded to faint marks, nearly invisible. By tomorrow, they would be gone. Yet the cold persisted. The pit clung to my memory like a shell of ice that refused to thaw. Ilyana’s face hovered in my mind, translucent. Accusing. Damned.
“Seven days,” Adelaide repeated. Again, her cheerful tone seemed mocking at best. “Seven days to claim the throne and burn the House of the Sanguine to ash. Or seven days to watch your facade crumble and you face the consequences of your lies.” She took a long drink of her tea before flashing a smile that stretched too far, showing too many teeth. She gestured toward the path. “I am satisfied. Best not to waste any more of your precious hours sitting in my garden.”
I rose on unsteady legs and walked away without a word of goodbye. I didn’t look back.
The stone bulk of the mansion loomed as I approached the garden wall. Ash waited somewhere in the woods behind me, where I’d slipped from his back and left him in the shadows. The return passed without incident, yet the days layered upon me, pressing down. Deep in my bones, the cold settled, a physical ache I could not shake.
I slipped stiffly through the wall and moved through the rose graveyard toward the servants’ entrance, my hoodpulled low as I navigated the darkening day. I emerged from the shadows ten feet from the door when a servant stepped out from behind a stone pillar, blocking my path. His eyes shone brightly with the zeal of a secret discovered. He had been waiting, positioned here deliberately by someone who knew I would come this way.
For one frozen heartbeat, we stared at each other. I could kill him. My dagger was in my hand before I consciously made the choice. Three steps. One strike. Silence. But then a window above us glowed with sudden light. A shadow moved behind the glass, watching. If I killed him now, whoever was up there would see. Would know. The servant’s lips curved into a smile as he ran into the mansion, where his shout would reach the most ears.
“Lady Emmeline!” His voice cracked with urgency. “I’ve found?—”
Emmeline had been waiting for a crack, and now she had one. The teeth of the trap had already snapped shut around me.
Chapter 35
Sidney
