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I’ve never seen an expression so cold.
His muscles are tensed, ready to pounce, and I can see his fingers flexing, itching to tear my wife apart.
That’s not going to happen.
I don’t let myself consider what she’s done. She has an explanation, I assure myself. She has a reason she’s doing this.
“So much for the two of us understanding each other,” Kiran says.
Blaise turns and looks at him, just long enough. “We both know you would have done the same to me if the situations were reversed. Or have you forgotten the way my heart felt in your hands when you almost ripped it from my chest?”
A shadow falls across Kiran’s face, but Blaise isn’t done. “What you made me feel, what you made me experience down in that cellar, what you made me remember—I knew then you’d never forgive me. That you’d never forget what I’d done to Asha in betraying her.” Blaise turns her head to Dinah. “I’m sorry, Dinah. I truly am.”
Then she turns back to Az, who says, “I would say that’s quite sufficient. I’m assuming you want the curse on your lover removed.”
I stiffen. No. “Blaise, we don’t need—”
But Az interrupts me. “I know how it feels. To know you deserve a certain level of love, only to have magic take it away from you. I can’t force Asha’s magic to do anything, you know that as well as I do, but I’ll ask her to convince it on your behalf.”
Blaise lets out an exhale, slow and steady, visible relief loosening her shoulder blades.
The sight has a knife slicing through my heart.
I thought Blaise and I had shared everything. Our blood, our vows, our bodies, but now as I stare at the woman I love, the woman I’d rip apart the Fabric between realms for, there’s a part of me that wonders if she can’t help but hold some things back.
“Then I assume we’re done here,” Blaise says, her voice utterly devoid of emotion.
Az gives her a smile that reminds me of a serpent. “Take your lover and go. You won’t be hearing from me again.”
“And if the Old Magic needs us present to remove the curse?” Blaise asks.
Az’s lip twitches. “If it’s not gone in a mooncycle, you know where to find me.”
Blaise nods, flinching as Dinah spits at her, Fin holding Asha’s sister in his arms as she fights against him, lunging for Blaise.
Blaise stares at the girl for a moment, then looks up at me, pleading, sorrow filling those beautiful brown eyes of hers.
What have you done? I want to ask her. And why, why was my promise not enough?
She’s holding her breath when she brushes past me and toward the door, where the mere guarding it steps out of her way at a simple tick of Az’s head.
My feet stay planted for a second longer as I examine the broken people left in the room, the friends Blaise has betrayed time and time again.
Bitterness leeches any affection in their expressions as they watch her.
As they watch Blaise ruin herself for me.
Again.
But then something Blaise whispered to me right before we departed Bezzie’s runs through my mind.
I know you love me, Nox. But can you trust me?
I’d promised her I did, and though my promise might not count for much as a vampire, it counts because it comes from me.
As long as it’s you, I whisper back to her in my mind, and then I follow my wife out into the hall.
We’re halfway through the palace, mere and guards parting for us at Az’s silent command, before Blaise turns the corner, then drags me into a small alcove.
