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“Oh, Vienne,” she murmured sadly, patting my unmoving cheek. “Sweet, foolish idiot, Vienne. Look what you made me do.” She spread her arms to encompass the room. “I had no plans to reveal my secrets tonight. My magic. Why, I wasn’t even going to use my powers. Not on any of you. But you forced me. You caused this.”
Sighing, she glanced at both Brentley and Urban. “I never planned to personally kill anyone with my own hands. I’d always been able to convince someone else to do it for me, to kill our parents, Caulder’s parents, Caulder himself... There was always a willing accomplice, desperate to please me.”
She turned her attention lovingly toward her husband’s body. Then she turned back to me. “That High Cliff priestess was meant to be my first and last murder. Honest. But you know, now that I’ve taken three lives with my own hands, I find it’s really not as troubling as I thought it would be. In fact, with each one, it grows more and more fascinating. More enjoyable. And this power you get from magical folk. My God, Vienne. It’s so addictive.”
Letting out a refreshed breath, she smiled and rolled her shoulders. “I’m certain I’ll do all my own murders from this point on. I’m actually eager to try different techniques, different…methods.”
Her gaze caught on me with curious regard, as if she were trying to decide which inventive way I should die.
A tear slipped down my cheek.
My sister stepped closer and studied it dispassionately a moment before she reached out slowly to wipe it from my cheek. Then she smashed it between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing it into her skin before looking into my eyes.
“I bet you’re wondering how long I’ve had magic, huh? And dark magic at that,” she added with a spooky, shaking voice before laughing.
“Well…” Drawing in a deep, revived breath, she began to circle me slowly. “It’s quite an interesting story. I always wanted to tell you about it and lord it over you, but sadly, I knew you’d find some way to take this from me too. It all happened at finishing school, you see. My first semester. You’d been there a year before I showed up and were already the golden child everyone loved, just like you were at home. I was doomed to be the second, neglected no one once again, forced to live in your glorious shadow. But alas, I met this girl from Lowden. Quilla Graykey. Yes, one of those Graykeys. She said there was dark magic in her. It was born inside everyone in her family, I guess, some kind of ancestral curse or whatnot, but she didn’t want hers. Didn’t like it. And the only way she knew to get rid of it was to transfer it to another willing host.”
She stopped in front of me so she could roll out a disbelieving laugh and shrug. “Can you believe that? All that power and magical ability, and the idiot didn’t even want it? What a waste.”
Glancing down at herself, she touched her own shoulders and smiled in approval. “I don’t know what she was so scared of.”
Spreading her arms wide, Yasmin caused all the bowls, statues, and pieces of art in the room to lift a foot from their resting places only to come crashing down to the floor, breaking and shattering each piece to bits.
“I find all this to be quite delightful.” Grinning gleefully, she leaned closer so she could whisper to me. “Do you want to know what the first thing I did with my new magic was? Well, I’ll tell you. I charmed all the tutors and instructors, opening their eyes to what you really were… A thorn in my side.”
With a shrug, she confessed, “It took a lot out of me, I’ll admit. I wasn’t able to use my powers again for quite some time after that. But it was worth it. God, it was so worth it, because finally…finally, you were no longer the golden child anymore. It gave me such a thrill to watch them beat you over and over again! And then, when Caulder and Soren arrived at our home to meet us and choose their brides, it was absolutely nothing to use a little of my magic to make them both fall in love with me and want me. Not you. And, so I became the queen, the beloved one that all of Donnelly worships.”
She tittered. “Well… After Soren and I got Caulder’s parents out of my way, that is. You know, it was so much more difficult to pull off their deaths than it was Caulder’s. Our parents, however…” Sniffing out a laugh, she waved a dismissive hand. “Now, their deaths were the easiest of all to plan.”
My cheek twitched as I tried to snarl at her.
Yasmin frowned at the move, but then shrugged, ignoring it. All the while, I kept thinking her hold on me was weakening and I was slowly regaining my ability to move again. If I could just get my muscles to listen to me, I could...
What?
I’m not sure what I could do against this wicked bearer of dark magic. She’d killed both Urban and Brentley with a single snap of her fingers.
Oh God. Urban.
He lay dead at my feet, and if I couldn’t get to him soon, he’d remain that way.
“Honestly, you didn’t think I could let them live, now did you?” Yasmin kept talking. “Our parents were vile traitors who were supposed to love and protect me above all others? Why, they still wished you’d been queen right to the bitter end. I swear, they thought I’d somehow stolen your birthright. The madness, huh?”
Turning away, she walked a few paces with her back to me before pausing and glancing around. “They annoyed me to no end, so I had to get rid of them. And then, after that, it was easier than you might think it would be to convince Caulder to ban the rest of the magical kind from Donnelly, so none of them could figure me out. They’d killed his parents, and High Cliff was busy fighting the evil Graykey family; he was scared to death of magic.”
More tears streamed down my face. While I could do nothing externally, inside I was screaming, pounding my fists of injustice against my own rib cage to break free and attack her.
She’d killed my parents, my love, my king, my friend. She’d betrayed me in the worst ways possible…and all for the sake of her own vanity, in order to get her own selfish wishes.
The frozen baby in my arms felt cold and heavy and motionless. I feared she would slip free of my immobile arms and fall to the floor any moment. But even if I were able to keep her against me, she would probably still die this night, along with the rest of us. And I could do absolutely nothing to stop it.
The idea caused my grief to thicken and smother me, my own tears suffocating me.
“Fucking your husband behind your back was enjoyable,” my sister was saying conversationally. “I have to admit, but only because I knew it would bother you, not because he was any good at it.”
She shuddered and sent me a sympathetic wince. “I mean, God, Vienne. I almost feel sorry for you for having to suffer through such cold, meaningless fucks every night with that lump. Well… Until this one came along, anyway.”
She glanced down at Urban’s body with a vindictive mutter and kicked his limp leg.
