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“She’s always insulting me,” Orcus grumbles.
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” She tickles underneath Prometheus’ chin. “How about you come with me for a bit, hmm? I’ll order you a nice plate of fresh meat.”
“What about me, eh? Yer goin’ to leave me with the love birds?”
Zyla casts him a wary glance. “Are you going to threaten to kill, skin, or otherwise hurt me or the baby dragon?”
“Name’s Prometheus,” Harald says with a grunt. “And any witch who’s a friend of Daisy’s is safe.”
“The company you keep is quite interesting,” Zyla tells me, eyeing the mark on my arm. It’s faint and the lightest shade of pink, but it may as well be dark red on my pale skin. “All right then, trull. Let’s go find some beds and food. Maybe we can even sort out that rot that’s taking over your skins.”
Harald bristles. “Rot? They’re not rotten.”
“They smell rotten,” Zyla shoots back.
“It’s part of my aesthetic,” Harald defends.
“Well. At the very least I’ll need to contain the smell. Otherwise, I may throw up.”
“All right, all right. No need to fuss so much.” Harald raises his eyebrows at me. “Witches are a fickle bunch.”
I shrug. “She’s not wrong. They do have a certain odor.”
“If ya can’t accept me for who I am—”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “I accept you and all your stabby ways. Thank you for letting Zyla do a containment spell.”
He harrumphs but doesn’t continue the argument.
Zyla nods at me and then gestures for Harald to follow her. The doors sweep open with a flick of her wrist and the guards startle. Orcus informs them which room to show Zyla and then the doors snap shut.
Orcus is standing in the middle of the room, but I delay the inevitable conversation and walk around, studying his princely bedroom. It’s not much different from the cave. There are no decorations on the walls. A few books lie on a table between two oversized chairs sitting before a fire. The bed is a huge four poster with blue velvet curtains which are tied back to reveal a dozen pillows and a fancy comforter. I trace my finger over the stone wall and glance at Orcus.
His gaze burns into me. I don’t think he’s moved, or even taken a breath, since Zyla left with Prometheus and Harald.
“So, you want to be king now?”
“No.”
I frown. “But you said—”
“I know, but I was buying time. You need to go home. Zyla is working on a spell, and if we can give her a few weeks, we’ll have a way to get you to safety.”
The shock of what he’s saying slaps me in the face. He wants me to leave after I’ve decided to stay? That’s not how this works.
“If I wanted to leave,” I reach into my pocket and pull out the charm, “I could go now. Callum gave this to me.” I search Orcus’ face. “One word is all it’ll take, and then I’ll be gone.”
His features darken as he stares at the gem. It’s so similar to the one I used at Edgar’s, I can’t help but wonder if Callum had been the one to craft the one he had used, but he’s too young for that to be true. Plus he seemed perplexed by the story Edgar had told. Almost like he’d seen a ghost.
“You had planned to leave all along.”
“At first, yeah, but you went and left me and I freaked out. Then I find you here, in this stupid stone castle, with more injuries than I can count.”
He steps toward me. “And that bothered you?”
“No, I was happy.” I throw my hands into the air. “Of course it bothered me.”
He takes another step, and I tip my head to maintain eye contact. “And now that you have the charm, what do you want?”
