“You’re the very last person I would ever love,” she cried, grabbing him by the lapels of his coat and shaking.
He grasped her arms, inadvertently jerking her against him. Her lips quivered inches from his, her breathing suddenly ragged, her eyes dilating. She looked as if she might kiss him—as if she was caught in a pitched battle between her steel-hard resolve to not want him and the potent reality of how she really felt.
Then she squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, still gripping his coat. And he realized with a sickening jolt that this looked far less like desire than compulsion.
God, was she right?
“I’ll destroy the contract,” he choked out, pulling back.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling and catching her breath. “But if we replace it?—”
“No replacements.”
He took the stairs two at a time, lifted the loose floorboard under his bed, brought out the manila envelope with all the contracts and galloped back down with it. She followed him to the brewing room and watched, silently, as he extracted the accursed document and slapped it onto the preparation table.
“Formeltan!”
Nothing happened. He bit back the expletive that would have felt very satisfying to say.
“So,” she said, voice hard. “I’ll have to destroy the one you signed as well.”
“If, that is, you can trust me not to rush off to harm your sister, her prospects with the League and the League generally after going to some lengths to protect all three,” he said, more bitterly than he’d intended.
Her breath hitched. She looked at the floor. “Yes. I can.”
He rummaged in the envelope and found the contract that bound him. He counted down. They cast the spell.
Both contracts lay on the table, completely unaffected.
“The third one,” she said, grabbing it and adding it to the pile.
Heart in his throat, he said the spellword in tandem with her.
It didn’t work.
“No, no,no!”he snarled, balling up all three contracts and throwing them across the room. They unrolled themselves, perfectly uncreased.
“Why is this happening?” she cried.
“I don’t know!” He kicked the contracts for good measure. “Just to spite us!”
He expected incandescent anger from her. Instead, she leaned against the table, staring dully at nothing.
“Three,” she whispered. “We went to the well one time too many.”
It had been his suggestion for her to make that last Vow to him rather than to Miss Knight. His fault. He slid to his knees, staring at the contracts that now inextricably tied them together.
“It’s as if they’ve all fused.” Her voice broke. “Is there nothing we can do?”
He pressed his hands to his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see her face when he delivered the bad news. “The only way out of a Vow left intact by the contract holder is death. Either party’s.”
“Death,” she repeated.
“You might not have to wait so very long,” he muttered.
Her laugh verged on the hysterical. “What, for my death?”
“No. Mine.”
