His face pinched, jaw snapping tight. “I didn’t believe him,” he snapped, “until he showed me another truth.”
A headache bloomed behind my eyes. “Oh good,” I muttered. “Let’s hear the revelation.”
He eased forward, back into striking distance. “I know you killed them.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” I purred, angling my head, just a little closer. One blow to the face and I could knock him out for hours.
The dagger pressed in, point biting flesh. “My family.”
My heart plummeted, landing somewhere deep enough to count. Chains rattled as I struggled, shoulders jerking against iron. “I didn’t…” The words caught in my throat. “That wasn’t me, Reve.”
“Of course it wasn’tyou.” His palm cupped my cheek again. For a heartbeat, softness wavered through, a reflection of who he had been. Gone in a blink as he snarled, “It was theViper.”
The dagger buried between us.
A burn ran through me, straight into my heart, tearing breath from my lungs. Blackness bled into the edges of my vision as my body shuddered against the shackles.
Pain, there was only pain where I thought it had been drained dry. My head sagged to the side, too heavy to hold.
“I would have loved you too, Verena.” His words skimmed the air, softer than a whisper. “Before you became this monster.”
The blade stayed deep, its hilt jutting from my chest, red soaking around it. He didn’t even grant me the leniency of pulling it free and letting me bleed out.
Through the edge of my vision, I could see his hand reach into his pocket, lifting a folded parchment. It hit the floor at my feet, a cruel afterthought, before his steps faded into the dark.
Steel doors grated open, then came the scrape of a heavy object being dragged across the floor.
I didn’t look.
The wall’s bite pushed into my cheek, into my thighs, until I swore, I could feel the stone imprinting itself into me. Bitter air licked at my mouth, berries used in waking rituals, sharp and astringent.
His anger tasted like that now.
Whatever I’d tried before, yesterday? Last week? It had failed. The dagger was gone. The pain in my body dulled to only memory. Someone had healed me but not freed me.
I could taste something distant and spiced in my veins, my blood no longer feeling like liquid, but dragging in a strange warmth, sweeter than it had any right to be.
The parchment still sat where he’d dropped it, edges curled, blotched by damp grit. I’d memorized the handwriting already, the ache behind every loop:
Sparrow,
Time has run out. He knows. They are coming for you.
I will join you in the sky one day, as promised. For now, run. For both of us. And do not look back.
I love you,
Dove.
I swallowed, staring at the crack in the wall until it blurred. Until my mind was mere seconds into rearranging everything that’s happened into something different.
A throat cleared, closer than I’d expected, breaking my focus, Reve’s voice sliding easy from the dark. “That was a good attempt the other day, by the way.”
His sleeves were rolled, tunic tucked into loose-fitted trousers, every weapon at his hip on display.
I refused to look up. So not yesterday. How long have I been down here?
“Tugging at heartstrings,” he clicked his tongue, giving a low laugh. “Not how I pictured you playing it. Though I did win the bet on how quickly you’d scream.”
