“The Crow Killer. That’s the name I gave our swordsmith’s brand-new design.” The Faerie King holds a dagger in his hand. “Delivered it just this morning.” The gold blade is inlaid with matte black, which I can only imagine is obsidian. “Catchy moniker, isn’t?”
I don’t hiss at him that he’s a disgusting stain on his race . . . on our entire world, and not because I fear he’ll plant his little dagger in my chest—he desires the magic in my blood too much—but because he’s as stable as a stick of dynamite whose wick hungers for a flame. I refuse to be the flame that sets him off because Gods only know how much chaos and destruction Dante Regio will rain upon Luce.
He taps his dagger against his open palm. “How odd that the cage Meriam spelled to keep harm at bay doesn’t make you feel safe.”
“Faeries can open it at will, so no, it doesn’t. Besides, it’s a cage.” I climb down one more rung. “Want to give it a whirl and see how much you enjoy it, Maezza?”
A smirk tugs at his mouth. “Meriam warded it against Faeries, so I cannotgive it a whirl.”
I glance back up at the golden pen.
“Were you not aware?” He twists his dagger so it catches the light.
“I wasn’t. No.” I hook a strand of my hair and tuck it shakily behind my ear.
“How surprising that Justus failed to impart this on you considering how much he’s shared.”
The adrenaline that courses through my veins funnels into my stomach and hardens it. I white-knuckle the vines, debating whether or not to scrabble up them anew and burrow into the cage, but then what? They’d shut me inside. It may be warded against Faeries, but it’s also warded against blood magic. Besides, I’m done being a captive. I want my freedom and I want Dante dead.
Not to mention it would screamguilt, and I cannot have Dante believing I’m cavorting with his general.
“Shared? More like schooled and scolded me.” I hop the rest of the way down, my heart beating triple time. “Justus Rossi loves nothing more than to make himself look imbued with supreme intelligence, doesn’t he?”
I sniff the air to make sure I’m not the one walking into a trap. My pulse eases when I catch a whiff of Dante. He no longer smells like rotted seaweed; he smells like a time gone past.
I glance beyond the king, at the tunnel riddled with soldiers. If all goes to shit, I will draw the key sigil where Justus did last time so that I end upsomewhere. Here’s to hoping that pressing my palm against the blood glyph will blur the path for my jailers.
And now . . . for the essential ingredient to my contingency plan.
“Do you really think I’d still be down in this dump if Justus was on my side, Maezza?” I stroll over to Dante, so close that my thorax brushes against the tip of his dagger. “He hungers to rule Luce through me.”
When blood blooms on the grubby silk encasing my chest, Dante rips his arm back and studies the cut he’s inflicted upon me in horror. How interesting that he worries about hurting me when he so readily cut me for his little lesson the other day . . .
He must decide he’s not so disgusted by the sight of blood on his knife because he twirls the blade in front of his face, awe lighting up his cruel blue eye. “I cannot wait to thrust this blade through Lorcan’s heart. Can you imagine his surprise when he realizes whose blood has snuffed out his humanity?”
His words flog me like those barbed iron whips apparently used by humans during the Magnabellum. Back in Scola Cuori, I never doubted my Faerie professors, but now I question every lesson I ever sat through.
“Lastra, pin my wife’s arms behind her back, will you?”
I blanch because if my arms are pinned behind me, then I cannot blood-cast. “Won’t you need access to my wrists for your lesson?” I hold them up in front of me. “May as well bind them in front of my chest and save yourself some reshackling.”
Lastra steps up beside Dante, green magic glancing off his palms. “Maezza? What would you like me to do?”
“I want you to do what I asked.” He whirls on his boots, his gold spurs clicking as he heads into the tunnel. “Behind her back!” Dante’s bark punches the musty air.
My spine vibrates with a chill. Since I doubt Dante fears my arms’ strength, his insistence for my hands to be tethered behind me can only mean one thing: he knows Meriam released my magic.
He. Fucking. Knows.
I can only pray that he doesn’t know about Justus’s plan of locking him inside the vault.Please, please, Fate, give us the upper hand. Please.
Oh, to have a soothsayer on hand. I try to propel myself inside Bronwen’s mind, but I must be too intent on the present because I remain locked in my body. I steady my staggering spirits by reminding myself that she’s seen Dante dying.
It’s up to me to make sure that he dies on my blade and not Lorcan’s talon.
This ends now.
Twenty-Nine
