“Sander, I need your help. There are memories in this bastard’s headwhere he thinks he had a bit of control over her, where he made her do things because she trusted him. I want those memories as his nightmares while we work.”
Black coated Sander’s eyes. He pressed his palms to Cian’s head. Von took my place in muffling the guard’s cries by shoving a scrap of pigskin into his mouth, while I handled the blade.
Inky veins split like cobwebs around Cian’s eyes. He screamed against the gag, staring at Sander’s black eyes in a bit of horror. Gods, I prayed he was tormented with the most horrific thoughts. Every memory of Skadi ought to make him piss his trousers in fear.
“Bastard.” Sander gritted out more than once. The trouble with my brother’s mesmer was while he crafted pleasurable moments of the past, he saw the truth before he coated them in horror.
“She told me,” I said, voice rough. “Tell me, is it as bad as I imagine?”
The gentler twin, the kinder soul, Sander was a ghost of that man when he lifted his glossy eyes to mine. Jaw set, hate written even in the nothing of his darkened eyes. “Kill him. Slowly.”
I did.
Every mark he watched Skadi carve into her own skin, I carved into Cian’s. Each tear she shed under the hands of him and Arion was paid for with his blood. She did not need to tell me every word he spoke to her, I knew this bastard played on the heart of my wife, a girl who’d been desperate to be loved, he’d used her for his own cruel delights.
He was a wolf who’d torn her to pieces, but she had beautifully put them back together despite his bite.
Blood was thick on the floor and linens by the time it wasn’t necessary for Alek or Sander or Von to hold Cian in place. Like they knew this moment was between me and the elven alone, they backed away.
Strands of my hair had fallen free over my brow, matted and soaked in his blood and flesh. I had to tighten my hold on the hilt of my dagger to keep it from slipping from my soaked palm.
The Otherworld hovered close. Cian’s gasps were wet and strained. Each cough fountained blood-tinged spittle over his lips. I straddled him again, leveling the point of my dagger over his throat.
“I want you to know, she will forget you. I will spend each day of the rest of my life seeing to it she never wonders if the man she trusts loves every piece of her heart. You and Arion betrayed her, and there is no room in this land for traitors. Go to the hells, you bastard.”
The blade pierced through Cian’s throat with a sick rip of flesh and bone. He died with his eyes locked in horror.
I slumped to the side of the bed, dark relief flooding my veins. For a long moment no one spoke a word, not until Von stepped forward. “Dawn’s approaching.”
With a nod, I stood. “Then we ought to make it so he was never here.”
Skadi was waiting for me at the top of the staircase to our wing. Arms folded, unfortunately covered in her satin robe, a hard frown on her full lips.
“Where have you been?”
“Just out, Fire.” I looked like the hells spat me back out. Blood still caked my hands, my tunic and hair. Exhaustion begged for sleep, for my bed, for my wife wrapped in my arms.
Trouble was my wife looked ready to send me to the Otherworld.
“You found the tonic trader, didn’t you?”
I merely nodded and shouldered my way into our room.
“You killed him?”
Again, a nod. I peeled off the sweaty, blood-soaked tunic.
Skadi hesitated, like she didn’t truly want to know the answer. “Was he elven?”
“He was nothing.”
“Jonas, I am not teasing.”
“Nor am I.” I reeled on her. “He deserved every damn strike, and you will not find a drop of remorse in me, Fire. You think you are the wicked partner in this vow, but I assure you that you are wrong. He learned as much tonight.”
Skadi kept one arm wrapped around her middle, the other pressed to her throat, like she might be trying to slow her pulse.
“Who was it, Jonas?” she whispered.
