She tilts her chin up to meet his gaze, auburn hair framing her fierce face. “We need to walk in with a plan of our own,” she murmurs. “And I need to say what we both already know but won’t admit: we need to keep the Decay suppressed.”
He knows. Fuck, he knows it in the marrow of his bones.
“I need to know; what sets it off?” she asks, pulling back, brows furrowing in focus.
Everything.
“A few things,” he admits.
“Like…” she prompts.
So he says the only thing he knows for certain. “When you’re threatened.”
Heaviness descends on him, and Elyssara notices. Notices the way his shoulders drop.
So she smiles, a teasing smirk kicking up her lips, transforming the dark into light in a heartbeat. “Has anyone ever told you that you should work on your possessiveness?”
He huffs a laugh, letting the lightness take root. “Teddy has been on my ass about that for some time, yes.”
She chuckles, but she shakes the levity from her tone. “What else? We can’t have the Decay taking hold at the wrong time.”
She says the words like there’s arighttime.
Kael sighs. “Any type of threat, really.”
Elyssara’s head quirks. “So all the time, then?” she quips.
“Pretty much,” he shrugs, letting a smile break free.
The banter is light, easy—a rare thing in the Known Realms—and Kael relishes it. Lets it slip beneath his skin and make a home, nestled into the depths of him.
But Elyssara burrows down in thought. “I have an idea…” she trails off. Her eyes snap to him. “It’s risky, though.”
He huffs a laugh. “Fuckingbreathingis risky here, El. What’s the idea?”
She wraps the furs tighter around her shoulders, clasping them in front of her chest to hold them in place. Her other hand finds its way to her mouth, worrying her bottom lip.
“I think we should use the Decay to our advantage.”
His eyes blow wide at the suggestion. “Consider me intrigued…”
“What if…” she begins, carefully considering her words as the plan comes to life in her mind’s eye. “What if we don’t use the Masked Ball as a way to gather intelligence? Maireth will expect that, surely. What if we find the Memory Orbs tonight? Breach the vault. Leverage being in the castleinvited.”
It’s bold.
Kael takes it in. “And what of using the Decay to our advantage?”
“Well, it’s not like it’s going to behave all evening, so we may as well use it. It responds when you’re threatened—so let’s take out all the threats in one fell swoop.”
Holy fucking Stars.
“Turn the Decay on the ones we want out of the way,” she adds, dragging her finger across her throat in warning.
There it is.
The terrifying brilliance of Elyssara Dawnmere.
She doesn’t recoil from monsters.She weaponizes them.
