Hathwell’s jaw clenches again. “I made a mistake. I befriended your father at his club, confirming the identity of both his parents and his wife’s—all human, all accounted for.” Hathwell makes a face. “He told me about his dead first wife…but he only mentioned one daughter. The nephilim had to be her.”
He hadn’t counted on Ada pushing me out of my family so much that my own father forgot to mention me.
“And so you got him into debt, so you could buy his daughter to be your sacrifice,” I say bitterly. He really did engineer it all.
“Yes,” Hathwell says, his eyes a little brighter when he continues. “It was easy. Your father is a fool who loves drink and cards, though neither love him.”
“I can’t disagree with you there,” I say.
“Of course, once I went to your home and realized my error, I had to recalculate, fast.”
“But I was so willing to help,” I say flatly, seeing how easily I played into Hathwell’s hands, saving him by offering to take Evie’s place.
“Was it you who went to the Three Bridges and asked around about me?” I say, trying to fit another piece into the puzzle.
“Not me personally, but a friend,” Hathwell says, his tone making it clear he won’t elaborate. “After you accepted the proposal, I wanted to know why Nathaniel hadn’t mentioned you before, and to make sure we weren’t making another mistake. We confirmed what you were when the medicine woman told us about the rash you get from demon blood.”
Demon blood. The thing that burns ephilium like acid. Except that I’m only a quarter pale-blood at most, so it just irritates me. Everything I know about myself is shifting before my eyes, morphing into something new. Is that where all my allergies come from?
“Nothing important has changed,”Syrus murmurs into my mind.“You’re still you.”
It’s comforting, because he more than anyone understands waking up to find something fundamental about who you are is different.
But just as I’m going to thank him, Hathwell lunges. I’ve been careless—distracted by the revelations—and it means when he yanks his arms up suddenly, it’s enough to knock my own arm away, and I drop the knife. He throws the chains cuffed to his wrists around the back of my neck, with enough slack in them to wrap around the sides of my throat and pull tight.
“The cuffs,” he grunts, jerking my head down toward them, his wrists crisscrossed right in front of my face. “Undo them.”
Panic spikes in my chest, but then a soothing presence encloses it.
“Don’t let the fear overtake you, Leah. The knife is right there, just within reach. Look.”
I subtly slide my eyes to the left, seeing that Syrus is right. If I stretch out my fingertips, I could probably grab it. Hathwell yanks on his chains again, bruising my neck.
“I thought we had a deal,” I croak out at him.
“Don’t give me that,” Hathwell sneers. “You were just going to leave me here to die.”
Die like his first wife, some poor young girl he killed in this very chamber? Like he would’ve left me bleeding out on this altar?
I flex my fingers, my anger finding me again.
“Yes, embrace that anger. It’s yours, and you have a right to it. You deserve to fight for yourself.”Syrus’s voice is calm and collected as he speaks to me, but I know he must be tense, waiting for me to do something.“You deserve to take your freedom back from people who try to snatch it from you, Leah. It doesn’t make you a monster.”
Hathwell is losing his patience, pulling the chains tighter.
“The cuffs, bitch!”
My rage breaks the surface at last, spilling into my mouth and muscles, bringing my frozen, frightened body to life.
“I wouldn’t leave you here to die, Hathwell,” I pant, thrusting my arm out to grab the knife. “I’m going to finish the job myself.”
Then I drive the blade up into his throat.
His grip instantly goes slack, and I shove his arms off me, crawling back across the floor to avoid the blood streaming from his neck.
I don’t feel glad or happy; I don’t take pleasure in it, but I do feel a small swell of triumph knowing Hathwell can’t hurt anyone else again. He thought he was taking a lamb to the slaughter when he married me, but inreality, he was wedding a much more dangerous animal—one who will fight for herself and avenge those who couldn’t.
“Well done,”Syrus says. “That can’t have been easy, but you’re?—”
