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“No!” Mrak roared and lunged forward, but Karn caught him. “Let go of me!”
“Do you want everyone here to die?” Karn hissed in his ear, just loud enough for Sylas and I to hear the words. “He won’t hurt her.”
Of course he’d tell Mrak that. Not that long ago, Karn had wanted Mrak to take another as his queen altogether.
Had this been the plan all along? If Karn knew I could forge nightsteel, if he’d been sided with Sylas this entire time, then of course he’d help play things into a hand where I’d end up forging weapons for Sylas as I had for a decade under Lazarus.
Mrak had to see this all as it was, right?
You can see the truth of this, can’t you?I asked him in my mind. But we were no longer connected that way.
“Take me,” I repeated. “We can leave this palace together and no one else will die.”
Sylas considered the offer, his gaze falling to where Karn held back Mrak. “I think I will. But I want my brother to give us his blessing.”
“Over my dead body,” Mrak growled.
Sylas raised his hand and more demons were lifted by shadow, a noose of darkness around their necks. “How about over theirs?”
Mrak looked at me, his eyes full of panic and unease. I nodded to him. Mouthed, “I love you. Do it.”
Mrak hesitated for so long, his jaw tight and his nostrils flaring, that I thought he might not speak again at all. But, finally, reason won after Karn whispered something else into his ear. Something too quiet for Sylas and I to hear.
“Fine,” Mrak spat. “You have my… blessing.”
Tears fell down my cheeks—real ones, despite the illusion I was building. I just hoped I was convincing enough that everyone, including Sylas, believed it.
I’d only have one chance to make this work. If I didn’t play my cards just right, this house—this world—would come tumbling down before me.
Sylas wrapped an arm around me. I tried not to vomit, even as bile slicked my throat from his touch. “Thank you, brother. You’ll understand it when I don’t invite you to our wedding.”
Sylas then whisked me away with shadow tendrils that cocooned me, restraining me so I had nowhere to go. He led me past shadow demons who’d just come to accept me, out of the palace I’d only begun calling my home.
Out into the courtyard. Past the gates. And into a carriage drawn by four massive beastly shadow creatures.
I felt the magnetism, the shared bond, between Mrak and I draw out thinly like fabric pulled taught until, with a final snap, it was gone.
But the death had stopped and, for the moment, maybe peace could be reached.
