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His hand stopped moving. “What? What do you mean, she won’t be a problem much longer?”
“We aren’t leaving, Tyreste.” Ana propped herself up so she could look at him. “Magda is only a foot soldier for someone much more powerful.”
“Mortain,” he said. “We already know that.”
Repressing was so natural to Ana, it took sincere effort for her to stay the course they’d set together when they’d promised full disclosure. “I talked to him, Tyreste.”
Tyreste shot up in a flash. “Talkedto him? He’shere?”
Ana shook her head. She looked at her hands instead of him. “In Magda’s mirror. It’s how they communicate. He speaks to her from Duncarrow, through some foul magic. Paeris mentioned it in a letter to Zofia, and I’d thought he was imagining it. I felt silly compelling a mirror to answer me. But then it did.”
“Fucking Guardians deliver us,” Tyr said, breathless. “You’re sure it was him?”
“Tyr.”
“Okay. Okay but, Ana... This is madness. Whatever he said to you, you know you can’t trust it, right? Even less than you trust Magda. His evil goes back hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Even saying that is utterly insane! But you know he’s a professional liar who has had lifetimes to perfect his trade.”
“A trickster,” Ana said slowly, “but that is not the same thing as a liar. He said he could rid me of Magda and return my father and Niko to me. Keep you safe. And all I had to do was say yes.”
Tyr seemed to grow bigger, taller, his skin reddening as he blustered through failed attempts to speak. “You and I both know he wants more than a yes from you. Demons don’t make deals that benefit anyone but themselves.”
Ana’s pulse slowed, spreading a fearful tingle through her limbs. “You’re right.” She continued nodding. “What he wants is worse than anything Magda ever asked of me.”
“But you didn’t agree,” Tyreste said. “So it doesn’t matter. Right?”
Ana bowed her head lower.
“Ana.”
Her head shook. “The thing about demons... They may pose the deal as a choice, but there isn’t one. There never is. You either accept or they take everything anyway.”
“Ana.” Tyr’s breathing quickened. He leaned in to catch her gaze. “Whatdid you agree to do for the sorcerer?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said, “but then we have to get to the observatory and tell Varradyn as well. He should have a choice, as I did, even if it isn’t really a choice at all.”
“What does the raven have to do with this? What choice?”
She wasn’t ready to answer.
“Wereallyneed to get the fuck out of town, Ana.”
“I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you what’s going to happen. I need to see him, and I will go with or without you. Without you is quicker, but... but I’d rather go with you by my side.”
He pulled his hands down his face with a groan. “All right. Fuck. All right. But first you’re going to tell me what the raven has to do with this.”
“Everything,” Ana said, then she told him.
Chapter22
Up the Mountain
The trek up the mountain felt longer the second time. Every step was agony, a steadily accumulating weight Tyreste couldn’t shed. Every breath filled his head with the image of Ana chained to a wall for the next ten years while the raven bred her until she was naught but a husk of the woman she’d been.
She’d been so forthright in describing her negotiation with Mortain that Tyr hadn’t had the heart to push her when she’d failed to answer the biggest question of all.
You aren’t seriously considering following through. We’re going to fight, right?
Or maybe he hadn’t asked, because he had nothing to offer except rage and heartache and a love bigger than all of it.
