A brittle chuckle pushed through my lips. “You have no idea.”
“You don’t think it’s painful for us too?” Bowen stalked forward with his hands fisted at his sides. “Seeing you with her? Knowing you have the power to grant her, grant all of us, peace?”
Silence. The sharp tang of magic spiked from the back of the cavern.
Amira gently rested a hand on his shoulder. “Bowen is right, Noc. Give Leena what she truly wants. An eternal life by your side.”
My mind spun. Their words sounded soright. But I knew they were wrong. Theyhadto be wrong. “I can’t do what you want. I can’t kill the woman I love.”
The red fog sharpened around Amira. “Why? You killed us.”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
My exclamation echoed through the cave and crashed back into me. The weight of that truth was soheavy, magnified by their presence before me now. Amira inched closer. The spider had strung me up between two massive stalactites, so all I could do was look down at the mess I’d created. At thelivesI’d stolen. They looked up at me, eyes wide and pleading, and the edges of my vision shook. Ihurt. My head. My heart.Everything.The cave walls threatened to crumble around me.
Bowen’s expression broke. “But now you have a choice to save us all, and you’d still deny us?”
Amira sighed. “I thought we meant more to you than that.”
Agony arced through me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew they weren’t real. No matter that Bowen’s deep chuckle was a sound my ears had forgotten they missed. No matter that Amira’s smile was too genuine to be an illusion. They weren’t real, and yet…
I couldn’t fight them. Not when they were so clearly the people I used to love.
A silent tear tracked down Amira’s cheek. “This will all be over soon. Your pain, your despair—the choice will be taken from your grasp, and you’ll be absolved of this torment.”
Every fiber in my being froze. For a moment, clarity pushed aside the dark call of the mages’ magic. “What do you mean?”
Footsteps clacked against the rocky floor at the mouth of the cave. In a tawny, shapeless, floor-length cloak, a figure appeared. Hood pulled tight over their face, it was impossible to get a glimpse of who they were.
A coy feminine drawl sounded from the dark depths of the hood. “I wonder, Noc, who are you talking to?”
Unease stirred in my gut. I recognized that tone. That haughty chuckle. She’d been the one urging me to kill. This woman was responsible for my bounty. The fragile control I’d managed to find threatened to shatter.
Jaw clenched, I searched for any sign of who she was. Anything I could use to track her before I lost myself completely. “Who are you?”
She laughed. “I’m asking the questions. Tell me, what are you experiencing? Hallucinations? You’ve held on tremendously well. Not like I really have expertise in this area. I’ve never hired an assassin before.”
“Leena has been pardoned. Remove the oath.” Rumbling laughter started up again from the dark depths at my back, but the woman didn’t notice. Or maybe she couldn’t hear them.
“I don’t think so.” She folded her arms across her chest, and the billowing sleeves kept her hands from view.
A snarl escaped from me. “What has she done to you?”
The woman shrugged. “Nothing. At first, I simply needed her for a spell. But Wynn’s remains were a better-suited ingredient, so she was no longer of use to me. The problem was, absolving the oath would’ve required me to out myself as the one who placed the bounty—an action I took without the Council’s knowledge. It was easier to simply let things play out. That is, until Gaige told me of your true heritage, Aleksander.”
Something hot and heady brewed in my gut. Leena wasnotexpendable. Even with the pardon handed down by Yazmin, this person was willing to simply let things play out to protect her own hide. Cowardice. And she knew who I was, thanks to Gaige. What sort of game was she playing? What was she after? I strained against the sturdy webbing, only for the spider beast to descend from the ceiling and add more threads to my cocoon.
Cursing, I abandoned my struggles and stared her down with all the malice I could summon. Sickening red tendrils coursed through my vision, making it hard to focus. “What do you want from me?”
“You’re just another ingredient. But before I could use you, I needed you to visit Oslo and Silvis’s Ruins. That’s why I sent Leena on that farce of a hunt.”
Warning bells clashed in my head. Yazmin had given Leena the instructions for the Azad taming.
As if reacting to my thoughts, the woman reached up and pulled back her cloak. Her platinum hair fell out in waves around her face. There was nothing but malice in her cold eyes. She tilted her head toward my hand, and the oath seemed to pulse with recognition. The red tendrils in my peripheral vision multiplied. And still, the cave walls closed in. There was no escape. No way out.
My head throbbed. “Why?”
“I have my reasons.” Strolling forward, she signaled to her beast. The spider descended from the ceiling and began tearing away at the webbing around my bicep. Yazmin snuck her hand into the deep pocket of her robe and extracted a small vial. A smile stole across her lips. “This shouldn’t hurt. Much.”
