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Make a show of Einar leaving. Lure Madame to the palace. Trap her. Find Damian and eliminate him, too.
It’s tenuous, at best, but it’s better than anything else we’ve come up with. Though Aika had wanted to be left out of the final details until the eleventh hour, she was forced to acknowledge we have reached it already.
Lawrence helps sneak us back to our apartments, irritably standing guard and muttering curses under his breath about how I should have told him, how he should have been with me.
He throws in a few grumbles about being stuck with the monkey while he’s at it, and I only sigh.
Meanwhile, Aika simmers.
I can practically feel the waves of fury and worry and despair rolling off of her. Even Pumpkin’s excessive affection as he rubs his head against her cheek doesn’t appear to be helping.
To her credit, though, she waits for the door to our bedroom to shut all the way before rounding on me.
“Do you even understand what we’re up against, how close you came to death in there tonight?” she demands in a low growl, setting Pumpkin gently on the sofa.
I knew this was coming from the moment I decided to go. At least with the help of Zaina’s tonics, the stars-forsaken serum has worn off.
It didn’t escape my notice that Madame doesn’t consider the serum torture, that the agony running through my veins was nothing compared to what Aika would have endured if I hadn’t come.
So if she expects me to apologize, she has another thing coming.
“What exactly did you expect me to do? Stay here and get a solid night’s rest while you alone suffered all of the consequences of everything we’re doing?” I suggest with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
“Yes!” she says without a trace of mockery. “That’s what we all signed up for.”
My vision goes red. I absolutely didnotsign up to sit here while she was tortured.
“The hell I did,” I shoot back. “Do you have any idea what it felt like to see her sinking her talons into you, with that monster standing over you ready tochoose his tools?”
The full weight of that moment nearly sends me to my knees. I haven’t had time to think about it, really. It was one thing knowing in some distant way what she has suffered at the hands of those people. It was another seeing the room where her blood has been spilled, probably still coated the drains and grout and the celestial-damnedshackles.
She squeezes her eyes shut, some of the fight leaving her. “Probably a lot like the way it felt to chain you to the torture chair where I have watched more people suffer and die than you could possibly imagine.”
“You mean the one you were about to sit in?” I ask in as calm a voice as I can muster.
“I could have handled it,” she insists.
Of course she could have. And she has. So many times.
“But you shouldn’t have to!” I bite every word out through my clenched teeth, the weight of this entire night crashing down on me. “What will it take for you to understand that your life is not worth less than mine?”
Her lips part, and she shakes her head, at a rare loss for words. The ire drains from my body, leaving fatigue in its wake. I move closer to her, pulling her into my arms and pressing my lips to her forehead. She curls into me while I breathe in her scent and soak in the fact that she is alive.
Alive and unharmed.
“I almost lost you tonight,” I whisper.
“She wasn’t going to kill me,” she says without any real conviction.
“And Damian?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she reaches up to undo the laces of my shirt. There’s nothing sexual in the gesture, even as she lifts the fabric up and off my head.
Her fingers trail from my shoulders, down until her right hand stops over my heartbeat. She leans in until her forehead is against my chest, her shoulders trembling.
It’s so unusual for her that I don’t realize she’s crying until her tears roll down my skin.
I wrap my arms more tightly around her, pulling her flush against me.
