“I gave myself bad directions,” she whispered. “I was the stupid one, thinking there was anything I could do, researching in the Athenaeum. I realize now, after seeing the way Faebarrow is again, there’s nothing I can do to fight it from the outside. The only hope is if I just go through with this marriage, I can actually teach him to be a better leader, like my mother did with my father. Maybe I can help him be better, kinder—”
“Kinder?” Damien grabbed Amma’s shoulders then, propriety be damned. “Amma, do you hear yourself? You can’t foster something that doesn’t exist to begin with. There’s no kindness in that man. He’s bloody evil.”
Her gaze swept over his hands still on her then up to his face, and she choked out a nervous laugh. “You…youthink Cedric’s evil?”
“Yes. And I think you need to be as far from him as possible.”
“Damien, I can’t leave the barony likethis.”
“Fuck the barony,” he spat. “What about you?”
Amma only held out her hands. He stared back at her, but she said nothing. It was obvious wasn’t it? If she stayed, she would be worse than miserable, even if she made some absurd headway with that bastard, it would never be enough. Shehadto go. But Amma only shook her head.
“You want to stay?”
“Well, no,” she admitted meagerly, as if it were a thing to be ashamed of, “but it’s my duty to stay. Plus, there are even more guards now than when I got out before, and that took a whole moon to plan.”
“You’re worried about guards?” Damien held up his arm to show her where the dagger was sheathed on his bracer beneath his tunic’s sleeve. “Nameless soldiers are little more than sacks of blood waiting to be drained.”
“No!” Her eyes flashed as everything in her face shifted from resignation to total alarm. She gripped onto his raised arm to pull it back down. “You’d reveal what you are. Cedric’s just as devoted to Osurehm and cleansing the land of evil as he is to taking hold of Faebarrow. He even calls himself one of Archibald’schosen. It’s bad enough you’re here at all, but you can leave tonight. I made Tia promise that you would be able to leave, that you would be safe. You have to go.”
Damien smirked—she thought he neededherprotection? “I am flattered you are so concerned about me, Amma, but—”
“I know you think you’re indestructible, Damien, but you aren’t.” She squeezed his arm, eyes pleading. “Youcannottake on an entire army by yourself.”
“Well, no, of course I wouldn’t do it by myself.” Damien reached into his pocket, pulling out the Scroll of the Army of the Undead, and her mouth fell open. “Wasn’t this your original plan? The reason you went all the way up to Aszath Koth to begin with? You don’t need to marry that idiot to fix things—you just need this.”
“I can’tactuallyraise an army to get myself out of a wedding,” she hissed.
“Maybe you can’t, but I can.”
CHAPTER 34
A MORALITY PLAY IN ONE ACT
“D
amien, you absolutely cannot do this.” Amma grabbed his arm again as he held up the Scroll of the Army of the Undead and let it unfurl before him. “Cedric intends to send my parents someplace quiet to abdicate the seat of the barony, but only if I cooperate. If I take this and stage a…a coup? An uprising? He’ll have them killed.” She swallowed. “And he’ll keep me alive.”
“Who said anything about you doing this? I’m not even sure you could. Can you read Chthonic?” Damien gestured with the unraveled parchment. Even in the darkness, the ink across it glinted in the moonlight with a smoky glow in a language she, indeed, could not read. That had been a slight oversight in her research, she had to admit. “I’m getting rid of this occupying force, Amma, and they’ll be gone for good—you won’t need to worry about retribution when I’m through.”
Damien was always ridiculously confident, and the way the static light of Lo shined off of him now, how it highlighted his dark hair and made the clenching of his jaw seem so severe, she wished she had the arcana to freeze everything, to stop before she said what she would say next, and finally give in to the things she’d wanted to do to him. But she didn’t—they’d already been missing from the banquet for too long, and now, as she stared at that smirk she wanted to ravage, she only delayed the inevitable longer. “You can’t. There are too many Brineberth soldiers, and they’re crawling all over every inch of this place.”
He arched a brow at the parchment, eyes darting across the lines. “Amma, I, uh…I don’t think either of us realized the scope of this spell. These numbers are massive.”
“I don’t care—I can’t ask you to do this. You’ll be going against the crown and brand yourself an enemy of the realm.”
“You’re not asking me, I’m just doing it.” He took her hand gently, removing it from his arm but not letting it go. “Listen to me: go back inside and find that imbecile, pretend this conversation never happened, and let me unleash the Abyss, all right?”
She was shaking her head, tears welling up again. Damien opened his mouth, and she could feel the magic words before he even said them, the ones that would order her to do exactly as he said. “Damien, no!” She lunged forward, slapping a hand over his mouth to keep them inside. Stunned, he only stared back at her. “You’re in the middle of Faebarrow Keep, and you’re a stranger here. No one will know why you’re doing this, even the people you’re trying to protect.”
He turned slightly to free the corner of his mouth, brows pinched. “But you’ll know,” he said softly against her palm. “What else could even matter?”
What Amma felt then, she was sure she had never actually felt before, not with this intensity and brightness. And even with Damien at its source, blood mage, demon spawn, dark lord, it indeed wasbright.
With a shaking hand, she pulled back, pleading with her eyes that he not order her away. She slipped her fingers over his cheek and buried them into his hair. “They’ll kill you, Damien.”
“Kill me?” He lifted the scroll once more, grinning fully, as if it were a game he couldn’t possibly lose. “They can certainly try.”
