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“How does it feel?” Marie seethed. “He doesn’t want you, Elio. The curse of the Knife of Fractured Rapture shows real love. The fated kind. The heart-wrenching kind you can’t escape from. And then it destroys it.” She sniffled. “I couldn’t get to you or the king, but the power of the blade showed me Paris, who I could get to. And here we are.”

I didn’t like the way her lips curled in triumph.

“Thank Aidan I discovered it,” she added.

Ugh. Her misplaced praise for him. Yuck. “Who gave it to you?” I asked.

“A well-connected friend.”

“The dead guy?”

She smirked.

Yeah, the dead guy. “What was his name?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” She was so cold, so empty of the emotion on display before.

Silvanus shot me a look to hurt my heart. One of, I don’t know, sorrow? Something even stronger than that?

Don’t look at me like that…

I hated that I wanted to cry.

I hated everything about this whole situation.

Silvanus’s expression darkened. “We will question you further in a less conspicuous place.”

Good idea. We really needed to get out of here, and I needed to find a dark corner to scream in.

Marie hissed, her fury directed back at Elio. “See what you did? See what a piece of shit you are?”

No response from him.

Let it come from the brother instead. “Takes one to know one, eh?”

Brother…

She ignored me, her hate fixed on him.

I kept going. “Because you can’t handle being dumped, you fucked me over. Us.” I pointed between the vamp and me.

Nothing, only more glaring at her ex.

I couldn’t believe this shit. All because of her broken heart, I had to kill the man I… I had to kill Silvanus. How was that fair? Why should anyone have to pay the price for Elio’s infatuation with Silvanus?

Kill the man you what? Go on, say it!

“We were married,” Marie finally answered. “We were planning on having kids, moving to Snowforest to start a new life away from this city. Be a family. Be⁠—”

“How touching.”

I spun to face Aidan, the crystal dagger appearing in my right hand.

He was badly burned, Hal’s beard and hair singed off, skin an angry map of pain. But healing. You couldn’t keep a dickhead deity down for long.

Shit.

He clasped his hands together, the epitome of delight. “At last we meet, mermaid.”