Page 144 of The Silversmith

How incredibly stupid I’d been.

“Shocking, I know.” Molochai cocked his head and flashed me a devilish smile. “Are you a little too trusting, Ary?”

“Ella,” Gavin pleaded. My name was all he had to say, no defense or denial. He tried to lunge for me, but Molochai trapped him in a prison of shadows. Even with his brute strength and size, he couldn’t escape it.

“You’ve been working for him,” I wept. “You’re on his side?”

“I’m on your side!” he shouted, scouring my face with his gaze. As if he needed to memorize it. “Since the moment I first saw you, I’ve been on your side!”

“Then tell me it’s not true! Tell me you didn’t kill Oliver.”

But in his eyes, there was no denial, just regret.

All I had left was a low, distressed wail as I seethed, “I hate you!”

Molochai’s laughter roared. This was nothing more than a show for him—my life and my heart, breaking.

“Good! Hate me! Fight for yourself!” Gavin reached for me again, futile against Molochai’s power. “You can, Aryella! You can fight him!”

Molochai’s laughter abruptly ceased when a gust of wind blew my hair off my shoulders. The left side of my chest caught his attention. He tore Gavin’s shirt away, leaving the full scar over my heart visible, along with my naked breasts.

Molochai’s tan skin paled. Darkness rolled around him in waves, now wild and uncontrolled. He looked at my face, back to the scar, then back at me. Shock snapped into place. He froze.

And in his eyes, there was suddenly… fear.

“You,” Molochai whispered, running his fingers along the scar over my heart, “aren’t Simeon’s daughter.”

Behind Molochai, Gavin bowed his head. When he lifted it, his soothing warmth and any remaining traces of hope were gone.

Molochai shuddered, wrapping his cold, taloned hand around my throat. “You filthy little mutt!” He squeezed. Rage and darkness devoured his guile. Panic bled out of him through trembling, angry breaths and wild eyes. “And you knew!” He glared at Gavin, betrayal threading through his terror. “Simeon kept her hidden away all this time, and you knew her—and loved her—and she—” He laughed in wild disbelief, pointing his other set of taloned fingers at Gavin. “She is why you came to me, so desperate.” Shadows shrouded Molochai’s eyes in deep onyx. “She is your wife.” He stared at the scar above my heart. “Of course, you don’t remember the day I gave you that scar,” he snarled. “You were only three days old, after all.”

Gavin strained against the ropes of darkness confining him. Roaring, snarling—the sounds of a rabid animal. And behind him were the sneers of Insidions as they gathered to watch our suffering.

Molochai’s laugh was loose and maniacal. “Such a sad thing, your little wife. Angelically beautiful, yes, outside and in. I felt for myself.” He arched an eyebrow and wiggled his taloned fingers, still caked in my blood from the places he’d sliced me open. “But weak, whiny… such a petulant child!” Molochai dug his claws into my skin and spat in my face. “It took a little longer than I’d hoped, but you and Simeon led her right to me.”

“Take me!” Gavin shouted desperately. “Take my life, my soul, but not her!”

Molochai scoffed. “You’d wait so long for her, you’d suffer so terribly, just to have her for what? Weeks? Days?”

“Yes.” Those deep-brown eyes, rimmed with tears, gripped me. Held me. Promised me.

Molochai bared his teeth. “Is she really worth throwing away your long, miserable existence?”

“Yes.” A tear rolled down Gavin’s cheek. “Always.”

“Special indeed.” Molochai brushed his knuckle against my cheek. “Sheer, untapped power. I would have him kill you. Punishment, for keeping you from me.” Molochai’s thin, red lips curved into a menacing grin. “But I would prefer to do the honors myself.” He revealed a long, jagged blade—a weapon surely forged in Hell—from a sheath at his side. “Since you escaped it the first time.”

The first time? Confusion whirled through me like my enemy’s dissonant shadows.

“Ella!” Gavin roared. “Fight!”

Molochai tsked and shook his head. “It seems, my son, that you and I have managed to steal the fight right out of her.” He thrust his hand forward with sharp, lethal speed.

The dagger in my hip felt like burning hot coals in my side. Molochai’s blade, right into my days’ old wound, ripped a bloodcurdling scream from my throat.

Gavin roared, a wild and desperate remonstrance that brought a sinister grin to Molochai’s face. Veins threatened to burst out of his skin as Gavin fought to move. But he was paralyzed where he stood. Held back by shadows.

Molochai twisted the knife above my navel before slicing upwards into the flesh of my ribs, so slowly, I felt everything. My scream faded into a broken, weakening cry.