“Stop talking about her,” I demand, but Darnley only grins, unfazed by my grip on him.
“Oh, we don’t think we will. See, we need you angry. So maybe we should tell you of all the ways we’ve imagined finally breaking that Leth bitch?”
I thrust my hands against his throat, briefly choking him. “Stop calling her that.”
“She’s stubborn for a woman,” he says. “Breaking her would have to be slow. Take a while. We have a room just for it in one of our manors—thick walls. No one would hear her screams.”
Darkness sweeps over me. A heavy, resolute weight. And for a moment, I let it settle, let it conform to my shape and soul.
But Darnley’s speaking still.
I can barely hear him. There’s only the beat of my pulse. The rush of blood in my ears and my veins and everywhere, the rush of blood in his veins—I could empty them all.
And the moment I realize that—
The moment Ithinkthat—
I want it.
I want every drop of blood in his body. I want to lay it all out and stand over it like a dragon over its hoard.
The wanting’s been there all along, and I never knew it, never listened to it because I feared it so much.
Distantly, I think this is why I feared it. Because it’ll eat me raw.
“—the High Blade used it to control the Red Cap armies,” Darnley’s saying. “Otherwise, what good are mindless droves of bloodthirsty warriors if we can’t direct them? Learned that lesson with the red mist stone. I got the rebels to attack, but they killed a worthless secretary.”
My head shakes. Attention focuses. “What?”
“The way the High Blade controls the Red Cap armies,” he says smugly. “Your dear father sent us that little bit of information for this very moment. We can control you. We merely needed you to be angry first, and you will kill her for me. Now.”
I release him only to wind my fist. I’ll break his face to pieces. I can see it already, the carnage smeared across the stones; they’ll never be able to get them clean.
STOP, I scream at myself. This is what he wants—hewantsme mad,wantsme to break—
I hold, my fist wound, sweat prickling across my scalp and down my back.
Walk out of this room. Walk out and regroup with Alyth. LEAVE.
But Darnley starts speaking.
Reciting something, words I hear but can’t make sense of, the way the writing swam on that letter I found. It’s a spell, magic draped around sweet nothings, and suddenly I’m rearing away from him, hands on my head, pain screaming through my skull.
No,no, NO—
I lunge at Darnley, but he keeps speaking these not-words until I collapse to the floor.
The black spots widen, grow and grow; all that anger he stoked in my body is like kindling to this spell, sparks catching and spreading andfeeding.
“I won’t kill her,” I grit out, hands digging into my temples, pulling on my hair. Strain makes everything both rock-solid and brittle. I think my teeth crack with the effort of trying to hold on, trying to resist the inferno within and without. “I won’t kill Mary, I won’t—”
Darnley crouches in front of me. I want to attack him again. Rip him to shreds with my own fingers, but the will and the action are disconnected.
Something else is there already.
A new task. A new focus.
My vision fades, black falling over me like a veil before I blink and shake my head, fighting. I can’t pass out. I won’t.
