“Hmm. I’m aware of the oath. But perhaps you just need to…try.”
“It’s a magicoath.Trying doesn’t change a thing. I can only show someone the path.”
“But telling me would be so much easier, don’t you think?”
Was he daft? “Should I explain what an oath is to you? That’s not a possibility.”
“We won’t know unless you try.”
“I’vetried.”
That sharp gaze traveled around my face before landing back on my eyes. In a flash, his easy smile vanished. It was as if he’d pulled off a mask, revealing something mean and horrifyingly cold. Evil.
Instincts roared to life, recognizing danger. I stilled, prey trapped by a predator.
“Not hard enough, you haven’t,” he said, and then he stepped away. “Bring them in!” he called out, and the door swung open.
Two young men and a woman, all close to my age, their hands bound and dirt marring every inch of skin and clothes, were shoved through the door. Guards shuffled in behind them, forcing them to their knees just inside the entrance.
And I knew.
Skies,before Koerlyn even hinted at what was to come, I knew.
Panic surged, just like he wanted it to. I didn’t care. I couldn’t pretend to be calm any longer. There was no control for me to have. There were no empty threats—Koerlyn would do this.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Please, they have nothing to do with this.”
Koerlyn withdrew a dagger from the sheath at his side. The hilt glinted with blue gemstones. “Then tell me how to enter the Domus.”
“Ican’t.It doesn’t matter how much I want to. I’ll tell you anything else, but I can’t tell you that.”
“You’ll give me other information in due time. But you know what I want right now.” His eyes slid to the man closest to him, and I remembered the bodies he’d massacred when he first took me. The way he’d turned insides into outsides, not sparing women or children or the old. He’d reveled in it every time. This would be nothing to him.
It would be everything to me.
I began to plead. “Ican’t tell you.You know this. There’s an oath, for fuck’s sa—”
Koerlyn stepped into the man and jabbed the blade into his throat with brutal efficiency. The man gurgled, choking on blood that spurted across the floor, before falling on his face. The other two prisoners cried out, the woman struggling against the guard who held her on the ground.
This—how—how could hedo this?
I yanked on the restraints. “Stop! Stop. Let’s talk about this. This won’tdoanything!” Just like that, I was no longer Etarla, the fakemagvis, but Etarla, the scared village girl Koerlyn had taken weeks ago. The one who was out of her depths. The one who held no power.
Impervious to my pleas, Koerlyn walked to the second man. He was moving too fast, allowing no time for reasoning, for discussion.
“No! I’ll—I’ll tell you! Just stop!”
I had nothing to tell him, but I would make it up, I would—I would spin some story, something that sounded true to buy time. It was the only way to make him stop—
Still, he slid the dagger into this man’s neck, just as he had the last.
My breath caught, and Koerlyn spun around. A thin eyebrow arched. “You have something to tell me?”
Abdomen trembling so violently my teeth nearly chattered, Isearched for words that could sound convincing. “You’ll spare her life,” I croaked.
“Tell me the way into the Domus,” Koerlyn replied simply, as if he weren’t murdering people before me.
“I-it’s to the south. Through Sixth. There’s a village by the Domus, and a river beside it. Beside the river is a cluster of five boulders. The tunnel begins there,” I rushed, hoping the lie was specific enough to sound real. I was tempted to say it was located in Harthon’s Territory, but Koerlyn would see right through the ploy. Aric’s Territory was the next best thing. Aric was our ally, and he could stop him. Kill him, maybe.
