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He was in pain, so much pain, then guilt, but at least he didn’t seem scared. That was the thing keeping me going: Kai was safe and surrounded by people who cared for him.
“Who sent you?” I asked the assassin.
He paused, seeming to truly consider my words before answering. “I…don’t know.”
“Did they hire you clandestinely? Use an anonymous middle person?”
“No, nothing like that.” He shook his head, and I very badly wanted to reach over and rip his throat right out of his neck. That wasn’t quite like me, but then no one ever tried to assassinate my mate in his own bed before. “I… no one hired me.”
I was confused enough now to check the boundless rage burning within my chest. “What the fuck do you mean? What are you? A hitman doing some pro-bono work?”
“No, I, uh, I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like someone else was in my body.”
My eyes narrowed as a familiar feeling grew. “Somebody else?”
“Yeah. But not like a person. I was getting back from a job on the borders, and none of the lights in my flat would work. Then it was like they came alive. Just swallowed me up, and the next thing I knew, I was scaling the wall to get into the prince’s chambers.” He grew even paler, shaking his head more emphatically as if that’d rattle his thoughts loose. “I don’t even know how I knew where his quarters were. I’ve never been in the palace.”
I stared at him, my stomach sinking further and further as he explained himself. It couldn’t be possible, but it sounded like… like…
“Open yourself to me,” I ordered before reaching out and grabbing his throat with my hand.
Squeezing, I poured my magic into him, staring past his face, going within. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, but I knew what I absolutelydidn’twant.
That was exactly what was staring back at me.
Darkness, pure darkness. Evil. Chaos. The unchecked desire to rend and destroy. Sharp teeth and yet no form, long claws with no hands. It was everything and nothing all at once.
My malignant shadow.
It rose up out of the man like a roiling cloud, surrounding me as it cackled noiselessly. It didn’t need to speak for me to understand it, to know exactly what it wanted me to know.
It didn’t matter how much I warded my friends, if I blocked it from them magically… it would find another way around. There was no escaping it. No outsmarting it.
It would win.
I stared, paralyzed to the spot as it thundered, crackled, then dissipated entirely. Except I knew it wasn’t really gone. It was inside of me, locked into every fiber of my being.
“Oh gods,” the assassin cried, eyes going wide as he was relieved of my curse. “I-I-I didn’t mean it, I swear!”
“He’s telling the truth,” I rasped, waving my hand to let all the guards pressed against the wall free. Stumbling to my feet, I made my exit. They were all shouting things at me, but I didn’t care.
I needed to get my curse out.
I needed it outright. Now.
An awful, terrible malevolence wound around my head as I returned to my room. Nothing even registered on the walk, and the next thing I knew, I was back in my quarters.
“I need to get it out,” I said to myself out loud. It had gone too far, and I was just sofuckingtired of being a slave to it.
I marched over to my magic bag, grabbed it, and started to draw a circle on the floor. I was like a woman possessed, perhaps not all too different from the assassin.
Except I was determined to free myself from the curse, while he hadn’t known what was taking over him. Yvonne was right: we’d both woefully underestimated the lengths the spell would go to target the people I cared about.
I finished in a frenzy and plopped myself in the middle of the circle, calling upon every bit of magic I had.
Rend. Tear. Cleanse. Wash.
Reset. Bless. Redeem.
