“He’ll either succeed in killing Vessik or he’ll finally be destroyed, and Catseye will direct his rage at Vessik as originally intended.”
“Yes, I—wait, what? No.” Helspira held up her hands. “If Ben’s in any danger, he’ll have the scroll to escape.”
An unsettling spark lit the banneret’s eyes. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Catseye would never let him go in there without a failsafe.”
After ensuring neither Catseye nor Ben paid them any mind, Rowan refocused on Helspira. “I’ll take the sentinels to Stow’s Peak to verify that’s where Vessik is hiding. You take those two sons-of-bitches to the wizard. Get the scroll and meet us back here on the outskirts of the village. If Vessik is, indeed, holed up there, we’ll swap the enchanted scroll with a fake before we send in the skeleton. If he succeeds in killing Vessik, Nyllmas is safe. And if he doesn’t, he’ll be stuck in the belly of the beast and have no choice but to die by Vessik’s hand.” Rowan smirked. “Then Catseye willfinallymake short work of him.”
All the guilt she thought she had shed upon the creation of her plan returned in the form of a metaphorical sucker punch to the gut. “You ... You still want me to betray them?”
“Should be easy,” he muttered with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. “He already seems to trust you more than most. How did you pull that off?”
Helspira frowned. “I don’t know. Basic human decency?”
A raspy chuckle rattled through Rowan’s throat. “Leave it to a demon to exercise human decency. Now go, sentinel, and make haste. I can hardly stand their company as it is.”
Her upper lip twitched, and she bared her teeth. Only for a moment.
Strangle him with his own entrails.
Wrestling her demonic rage into submission, Helspira pinched her eyes shut. Would the banneret notice her brief display of defiance? She wondered until she heard his dissatisfied grunt.
“Don’t forget what’s on the line, sentinel. Fuck this up, and you demons will find yourselves back in Chthonia. Is that clear?”
It was nothing short of a miracle that her teeth didn’t snap from the force with which she clenched her jaw. “I’ll do whatever it takes to save Nyllmas, Banneret.”
“See that you do. Before you go, tell that bastard to leave a vial of his patchouli oil behind.” Rowan glared at the undead guide leading the pack. “That sonofabitch is starting to smell.”
Chapter Nine
Sikras
OKAY. TIME HAD RUNout. Four years came and went, he lived a pathetic life of stagnancy, and now Vessik had to die.
Vessik, who had spent his early twenties reading to displaced children in the almshouse, not only to lift the kids’ spirits but to help Vessik better practice his reading comprehension.“It’s like the letters are all jumbled when I try to read them,”Vessik would say.“I wager that’s why I make a terrible wizard. If I could learn to better pronounce the verbal components and read to the kids at the same time, it’ll be like feeding two birds with one scone.”Because, to Vessik Holm, even the phrasekill two birds with one stonewas too violent to utter.
