Page 40
Because mad, he was. Clearly.
“We cannot have disobedience. We cannot have dissent,” Malakar muttered to himself, still pacing. “I know. I know. We are so close. So close. We are so close to reaching the Line.” His gaze snapped to Elyria once more. “If only she would give us my power, our glorious purpose can begin. We can reshape this world as it was always meant to be.” The next words came out in a furious flurry. “If only you would help me!” he shouted, throwing his hands in the air.
Whether he intended it or not, Elyria didn’t know, but the motion loosened the grip of Petra’s shadow collar, and she sucked in a heart-wrenching gasp. The blood-magic ribbons wrapped around her hands dissipated into the ether. Tears fell down Petra’s reddened cheeks as she fell to her knees, sobbing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice raspy, a harsh whisper.
Elyria was beside her in an instant, doing her best not to glare at the dark sorcerer as she rubbed Petra’s back, mimicking drawing in long, even breaths through her nose, then exhaling through her mouth.
“It’s all right,” Elyria said soothingly. “Everything will be all right.”
“You will help us, won’t you?” Malakar’s voice was soft now, pleading. He blinked several times, as though he’d been momentarily stunned. “You will help me?” Long fingers wrapped around Elyria’s upper arm, and she found herself being lifted back to her feet, his face only inches from hers. “Please, regina, I cannot do this without you.”
He was crazy. He was absolutely, one thousand percent, gryphon-shit insane. But Elyria wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead, she swallowed the frenzied curses that she wanted to spit into his sharp, cruel face, softened her voice, and said, “Help me understand what it is you’re trying to do, and I will help you in any way I can.”
The look of relief on Malakar’s face was so strong, so repulsively close to pleasure, that Elyria had to actively fight the urge to recoil.
“I do want you to understand,” he said softly, “what is coming. What accessing the Line will mean for us, for you.”
What was he talking about? Elyria did her best not to react when she felt a still-sobbing Petra clutch at the leg of her breeches. “The . . . the line?”
“Daephinia did me a favor, as it turns out, by sundering the world in her grief. Accessing it will be so much easier from within the Chasm, you see?” He clasped his hands together in front of his robe, the gold thread from the wolven emblem embroidered in the center of his chest glinting in the torchlight.
Elyria couldn’t help the way her eyes drifted over his shoulder, to the massive front entrance doors still shut behind him.
He frowned when he followed her gaze, his lips pressing into a thin line. But a few blinks of those black eyes—or was that a flash of amber she just saw?—and he was rambling again. “I did not think I would be able to reach the Line on my own. Most certainly not without the crown. But since the Sunfyre Queen already did me the favor of ripping a path directly to it, that’s not an issue anymore. And now all we need is for you to return my power, and we can begin.”
“But I can’t—”
Petra let out a low wail, and Elyria found it very difficult to swallow . . . because Malakar’s hand was suddenly wrapped around the base of her throat. It wasn’t squeezing, wasn’t choking her. But it was resting there, long fingers splayed over her collarbone, a reminder of just how easily he could close his hand, of what he had just done to poor Petra.
“Your power is tangled up inside me,” she said calmly, voice low, even as her pulse hammered against his grip. “I still don’t know how to free it for you, mi sanguinexos. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try to help you.”
His hand tightened infinitesimally.
“I will help you,” she said, more firmly. “Why don’t you dismiss the girl, and you and I can discuss exactly how we can make that happen.”
Malakar smiled.
And whatever momentary flicker of relief she might have felt was quickly undone as his hand moved across her clavicle, sweeping her long periwinkle braid back over her shoulder, and—
“What is this?” he said, head cocking to the side. His grin faltered.
Elyria went very, very still.
On the ground, Petra quieted, head pivoting between Elyria and Malakar like she didn’t know who to pay attention to.
Get out of here, you foolish girl, Elyria wanted to scream at her. She wanted Petra to realize that Malakar was unlikely to notice if she ran. His focus was narrowed so wholly on the side of Elyria’s neck, in fact, that she doubted he was capable of noticing much of anything at all in that moment.
“It’s nothing,” Elyria said, offering a casual wave of her hand in an attempt to mask the way her fingers trembled. “Just an old scar. I have many from over the years. You should see the ones on my legs. They’re—”
“You are lying.” There was something almost like curiosity in his tone. Much to Elyria’s surprise, there was no hint of anger, though she almost wished there was. Because when the dark sorcerer brushed his thumb over her bondmark, something wrong gleamed in the pitch-black depths of his gaze, and no power in all four quarters of hell could’ve kept Elyria from shuddering at the intrusion.
Not yours! she shouted in her mind. She bit the inside of her bottom lip to keep herself from shouting it aloud too.
“You said my power is tangled in you. But tangled in what, I now wonder.” Malakar took a step back, lifting his hand just enough to pinch the chain of Cedric’s token, pulling it out from beneath Elyria’s tunic. He rolled the lightning-streaked blue stone between his thumb and forefinger, the empty emerald cruelly winking at her with each pass. “In who?”
Elyria couldn’t speak. Her head was suddenly pounding, muddying her thoughts.
