“No. Dash will accept my word that the deed is done.”
“Thank you for that mercy.”
It wasn’t mercy. It was decency.
Xaydin led them outside, but before they could go far, Masakage pulled him to a stop.
“I can heal him.”
Xaydin was surprised by his brother’s words. “How so?”
“I have the means to spare his life, if you want.”
With a side glance to Gisela, he hoped he was wrong about his brother’s intentions. “We’d have to take a life to spare his.” That was the common price for such magic.
Masakage screwed his face up in protest. “I’m not talking about dark magic, idiot. I can heal him with herbs.”
Gisela’s face lit up. “How so?”
“It’s a poison that’s making him sick. All poisons have antidotes that don’t require magic.”
“Not all poisons,” Xaydin reminded him.
“Most poisons have antidotes that don’t require magic. This is one of them.”
“And you can do this for them?” Gisela asked.
“Rather sure I can.”
Xaydin cursed his brother silently. Of course, he could. Anything to make his life more difficult. “So you want me to kill him?”
Masakage gave him a droll stare. “No. I’m proposing an exchange. He releases the contract for his life.”
Just as Xaydin warmed to the proposition, Gisela’s happiness faded. “Wait a second. You still intend to break the contract?”
He rubbed his jaw as he considered it. “Void the contract, not break it.”
“Semantics.”
Xaydin nodded at her hostile word. “And the most important semantics for you is that you will have fulfilled your orders. Theaþaswereyou were sent to protect will live. Semantically, you will have done what you were ordered to do.”
Gisela considered that. He was technically correct. In good conscience, if theaþaswerewas alive, she would have fulfilled her mother’s orders. But that wasn’t the intent. Her mother wanted the contract preserved.
“Dash will kill my mother.” And while she had issues with her, she didn’t want her mother dead, per se. Maybe because she kept hoping her mother would do better.
Be better.
So long as her mother was alive, she had hope that they could rectify their broken relationship. And hope was so important.
“That would be up to your mother. Unlike me, Dash doesn’t kill indiscriminately.”
He said that, but she hadn’t seen him kill anyone haphazardly. Indeed, if it were true he’d have slaughtered Saress on his deathbed and not cared.
No, there was more to Xaydin than his terrifying, callous reputation.
A lot more.
“Shall we talk to him?” Masakage asked Xaydin.
