Help me remember.His own blood had been warm against his ankle as he mirrored it without hesitation. The memory had never been clear. Not her face. Not her name. Only the feeling. Only the certainty that it had mattered more than anything else he had ever been given. He had placed it somewhere safe. Somewhere contained.
But this?—
His gaze locks on the mark again, and something inside him gives way.
Colsar lowered her to the ground, pulling her cloak straight with a care that made Sevrin’s teeth grind. Afterward, she remained there, looking up at his brother expectantly. Sevrin felt sick, his heart hammering. The scar on her ankle. The mountain, the girl from his childhood. Forcing his feet to move, he retreated into the dark, slipping toward his study with his pulse hammering.
She was never supposed to be Colsar's. She was always supposed to be his. He had promised her.
And Sevrin does not break his promises.
CHAPTER 80
The Nightmare
The nightmare pulls me out of sleep before I understand why. I am already upright, my breath caught hard, the remnants of it still clinging. Mysin. The fire. The knife. The laughter. My hands tighten in the sheets. “I cannot do this here,” I say quietly.
Colsar is already awake. He shifts beside me without hesitation, his hand finding my arm as he studies me in the dim light, his attention moving over my face as though he can still see what I have not said. “Asharin?—”
“I need to kill him.” The words come without strain. Knowing Mysin is here, alive beneath this palace, has changed something I cannot ignore.
He does not argue. Something in him pauses, weighing not whether I mean it but whether there is anything left to say that would matter. Then he rises, the decision made. “I am coming with you.”
The corridors are stripped of everything that fills them during the day. No movement, no voices, only shadow stretching aheadas we move through it, our steps carrying further than they should in the quiet. The palace feels different at this hour, as though it has stopped performing for anyone and is simply existing.
I do not look anywhere but forward.
By the time we reach the lower levels, whatever remained of the dream has burned itself into a clarity that is clean, cold and entirely mine. The guards step aside without question as we approach, though I feel their attention follow us as we pass.
Colsar slows just before the entrance, his hand catching mine, drawing me back just enough to make me turn to him. “You have killed creatures before,” he says, his voice low. “Killing your brother is not the same thing, Asharin?—”
“I do not want you to do it for me,” I say, holding him there, not asking and not wavering. “I just want you to be there.”
He looks at me, something moving through his expression before it clears, and then he inclines his head. That is enough.
I step closer and close the distance between us, my hand sliding up along his neck as I bring my mouth to his. The kiss is immediate and unrestrained in a way that has nothing to do with softness and everything to do with what waits beyond the door. His hand comes to my waist and pulls me in as though he understands that this is not hesitation but preparation. We do not linger. There is no need.
When I pull back I rest my forehead briefly against his, my breath still uneven though not from fear. “I love you,” I murmur. “For being here. For being mine.”
His mouth finds mine once more before he draws back just enough to look at me. “Standing in a dungeon,” he says quietly, something darker running beneath the words, “while my wife prepares to kill someone is not helping my restraint.”
A brief laugh escapes me before I can stop it, real and unexpected. “Come on,” I say, pushing lightly at his chest.
The door opens and the air inside presses in, thick and wrong, carrying a sour edge that speaks of something designed to break a body slowly rather than end it.
I stop just inside the threshold and let my eyes adjust.
Mysin hangs inverted from the ceiling, his ankles bound in iron, suspended above a narrow well filled with a bubbling, green liquid. A lever stands beside it, simple in design, built to lower and raise him in measured intervals. The room is otherwise unremarkable. Dark walls. A single torch. The smell of something chemical beneath the damp.
He does not move at first, and I wonder if he is already dead. I feel something complicated move through me at that thought, something I do not examine too closely.
Then his body jerks, as though something is forcing the movement through him, his limbs pulling tight as the mechanism lowers him and his head disappears beneath the surface before being drawn back up again. When he emerges the sound that leaves him barely resembles anything human. The liquid trails down his face and neck, clinging where it has already begun to alter the skin beneath it.
Colsar exhales quietly beside me. "Soraka."
I glance at him. "A poison?"
"Yes." His voice remains even. "It makes you feel as though pieces of your skin are being pulled free. Slowly. Repeatedly." A pause. "It does not stop between intervals."
