My blood ran cold. Uloox venom was downright lethal. That damn poison would cause my muscles to seize and cloud my mind. Between that and the jarring static still pealing through my cell, there was no hope of holding on to my thoughts. And I had no way of stopping him.
He reignited his lure, and the stone walls reverberated with the sudden influx of light. The carving knife glimmered.
“When she found the spell for saving our kind, she also discovered a number of forbidden texts. Scraps of dark practices and magic left behind from some of our exiled brethren. Bloodletting to weaken the resolve—a reminder that the world outside the realm is a cruel and unfair thing. It was used to tame a monster from Kitska Forest.” Eyes devoid of emotion, he met my gaze head-on. “Certainly a crime, but I’m running out of options. Let me in, and this will all be over.”
I bucked against him, but his fingers were shackles of their own, and the blade sliced my skin. A perfect half-moon cut. I screamed and jerked my chained wrists. But the venom was fast, and soon my limbs were lead. My cries fell on deaf ears, and Wynn made another cut an inch above the first. A torrent of pain arced through me, burning in heated waves up my legs and pushing water through my eyes.
Again and again his blade pierced my flesh.
Vision swimming in a series of stars, I prayed for darkness. For my subconscious to break and pull me under. But when it was tantalizingly close, when stars turned to black dots and my fractured sight slipped into indeterminable swirls, Wynn stopped.
“I can’t have you passing out. No one has ever tamed an unconscious beast.” He summoned a Poi from his unending network of beasts. Without prompting, the Poi moved to my weeping wounds, and a scratchy tongue methodically coated every nick. Once done, the Poi sat back on his haunches and looked up at Wynn. Sighing, he leaned over my leg again. “Whenever you’re ready, Leena.”
The second time around was worse. Agony crushed me, shattering my ribs and making it impossible to breathe without sobbing.
Wynn’s voice seemed to drift from a thousand miles away—and yet in this moment, he was so monstrously close. “Why don’t we try a different tactic? Maybe associating pain with a memory, a reason for abandoning your ties to this world. How about…Noc?”
His name spoken aloud was harsher than the blade against my skin. Shuddering, I tried to press myself into the wall. To disappear completely.
Wynn paused. “What a selfish thing for him to do.”
Selfish.The venom clouded my mind and whispered about things I didn’t want to believe.
Wynn picked up the blade again. The tang of iron skirted through the air. “Is it worth staying here? With this pain? There is no agony in the realm. You’ve been there. You know.”
Noc.It was so wrong and so right to still want him, to still hope that we had a chance.
Wynn murmured, “Leave him behind, Leena.”
My back arched into the wall.Noc.In my mind, I reached for him. Spoke to the shadows lingering in the recesses of my brain in the hope he’d hear me. I cursed him for—willingly or not—using me as a bargaining chip and then begged him to come back and prove everything I’d seen wrong. There weren’t any dark corners in my chamber, though, and the barriers of Hireath would make it impossible for him to find me.
“You’ve still never wished on a Gyss, am I right?” Wynn set his blade to the side. “Your knowledge is all theory, not firsthand experience. Did you know they don’thaveto speak in riddles? That sometimes the payment is as simple as the wish?”
I tried to pull away from that taunt, even as I felt compelled to ask, “What are you saying?”
He signaled his Poi to attend to my wounds. I barely registered the lick of the beast’s tongue. Leaning closer, Wynn brushed hair away from my face. “I’m saying there’s a chance Noc knew he’d be sacrificing you. Just like I did. After all, it was your life or his.”
Fresh tears fell from my eyes, and I fought against my heaving chest. “What?”
My thoughts slipped through my fingers like water. I couldn’t hold on to a solid memory. He’d promised he wouldn’t use the Gyss against me, hadn’t he? He wouldn’t have knowingly sacrificed me.
The buzzing intensified, and the burn in my legs crawled higher. Nothing felt right.
“If he didn’t kill you, then he’d die. It’s the magic behind Cruor’s Oath.” Wynn pressed his lips into a fine line. “Everyone has their own agenda, Leena. Some are just nobler than others.”
The poison settled thick in the crevices of my brain, but even so, I could hear truth in Wynn’s words.
Noc.He’d told me that the oath still needed to be fulfilled, but he hadn’t told me about the cost. He might’ve been willing to sacrifice some bits for my life, but this? He wouldn’t give up his own head in exchange for mine. I’d pegged him as dangerous from the moment I set foot into his house. And yet I’d trusted him, fallen for him, and forgotten just how deadly he could be.
“He was nothing more than a murderer for hire, and you were the easiest mark he ever saw.” Wynn’s fingers fell to my chest, and he rested his palm against my heart. Searing fire spiderwebbed outward from his fingers, burning through my veins in an attempt to cleanse the very thought of love.
I was spinning. Or maybe that was the room. The ceiling and walls converged and separated.
Wynn moved his hands to cup my face. “Let go.”
Rivers spewed from my eyes, salt water crashing against the marble. Broken. I felt sobroken.
“That’s it, Leena.”
