A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Forty-one

Forty-one

11:00 AM

19 hours and 45 minutes until execution

“You can’t be serious.”

Dwyn shook her head in smiling awe as they pressed themselves into the wall, eavesdropping on excited muttering going on beyond the palace walls. “Oh, is there nothing she can’t do?”

It had taken them the night to gather their bearings and gain the intelligence necessary to learn that Ophir had been in the capital for a day or so, comfortably residing within the palace walls. It was also brought to their attention that they’d arrived just in time for what was to be the very public execution of a foreign fugitive: Lord Berinth.

“I can’t believe she found him,” Tyr breathed, keeping his voice low while they remained in earshot of others.

“I can.”

“She can’t hear you. You don’t have to kiss her ass when she’s not around.”

Dwyn turned from where she’d kept her cheek to the wall, glaring. “Is it so hard to believe that my emotions are genuine?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they are. She’s gone from the most fragile, direction -less thing on the continent, to an unstoppable force. She fears nothing and accomplishes everything. There’s no one I’d rather have as a partner. Now shut the fuck up. I’m trying to listen.”

He pressed into her a little too close in the shaded alley as they arched their ears toward the gossiping going on just around the corner. She threw an elbow for him to get back, but he did not.

“…four of them!”

“All from Farehold?”

“Yes! But two…”

Tyr whispered, “What is she saying?”

Dwyn spun on him, shoving him with two hands so he created space. She fumed back at him. “You just spoke over what may have been valuable information. Why don’t you disappear and go down there! Use your ghost power and make yourself useful!”

“Because I don’t speak the language!” he bit back, keeping his words to an angry whisper. “You’re the one who keeps sucking civilians dry so you can understand what they’re saying!”

She waved a hand to shush him.

“Which I appreciate —” he tried to amend, remembering their conversation.

“Appreciate me later!”

By then, the bystanders had moved on to other topics. Dwyn was visibly annoyed, but they’d learned enough. The courtyard in front of the palace would host a beheading at sunrise. Given the city’s heat, she was grateful everything seemed to close around midday. She wasn’t sure if she would have been able to stand in the crowd to watch Berinth’s justice while baking to death, pressed against thousands of bodies.

“What do you mean, beheaded at sunrise?” Tyr asked.

Her face remained utterly expressionless as she met his gaze. “I mean they’re beheading him at sunrise.”

“But Ophir is the one who wants revenge. Why would she want someone else to do it? Why would Tarkhany get involved? Why would—”

“I’m sorry, do you have a fundamental misunderstanding for translation? I’m relaying the message. Their queen gave some decree last night, they’re spending a day informing the people and overseeing labor, and other than that, I have exactly as much information as you do.”

Dwyn had killed no fewer than six people since their arrival in Tarkhany, three of whom had unwillingly given up both their lives and their home so that the Sulgrave fae had a place to hide. Their horses now had a shaded place to stay, which had made Tyr happy. He didn’t like the idea of subjecting Knight to the heat just because he was on a foolhardy mission through the desert. Tyr had asked why she didn’t kill hundreds and stockpile blood but inferred from her answer that she’d tried something of the sort once, only to find borrowed abilities to be rather time-sensitive. He stopped himself from commenting on the mass murder of what had undoubtedly been a helpless village in the name of her experimental pursuit for power. He was trying to get on her better side, after all.

***

They’d been in the house for scarcely a minute before Dwyn stepped out of her clothes, leaving them in a pile by the door the moment it latched behind her. She collapsed onto the middle of the bed, dark hair sticking with sweat to her neck and part of her back.

“Move over.”

“Sleep on the floor,” she murmured into the pillow, voice muffled.

He made a face, looking at the rock-hard floor. It was cool, which was nice, but he couldn’t imagine a less comfortable night’s sleep. “The floor is stone while the bed is big enough for three.”

Three who remained were mummified husks in their very room, watching them with dehydrated, lifeless eyes. They had no place to bury the bodies in the sand, stone, and clay of Tarkhany’s capital. They’d remain in the room as dead sentinels, monuments to Dwyn’s callous theft of life.

Dwyn sighed and moved from her place comfortably in the middle to the far side of the bed. It was too hot to sleep under the sheets, but the family had barrels of water set aside. She’d been able to call to it in the form of a mist, cooling them intermittently to keep their body temperatures low. Tyr took off his shoes, then his shirt as he lay down next to her. He—as did most people on the continent—possessed a modicum of modesty more prevalent than the siren’s.

“You got an answer from me in the desert,” he said, folding his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “I want a secret.”

She rolled to her side. “Fine. It’s too hot to fall asleep. What do you want to know?”

“It’s something I’ve been thinking of for a while. The more I’ve been around you, the more I’ve seen your power, the more confused I am.”

It was clear from her expression that he’d tickled her curiosity. “Go on,” she prompted, propping herself up on her elbow as she looked at him, black curtain of hair falling over her shoulder, gaps between tendrils of hair revealing the curves of her breasts. From her navel, to her hips, to her toes, she was far too comfortable being naked.

“You can do anything,” he said.

“Is that the question?”

He shook his head. “Can you manifest?”

“Is that the question?”

Tyr met her eyes at last. “Why haven’t you broken the bond?”

Her expression tightened. “You’re asking why I haven’t removed my tattoo so I can kill you,” she reiterated flatly. Ah, yes. The siren understood him just fine.

He didn’t bother nodding, just continued to look at her.

“The Blood Pact doesn’t use a natural power for the bond. You know that. Their namesake has appropriate connotations. It’s unbreakable.”

“But surely—”

“It’s not magic. It’s not a power. It’s a curse, Tyr. We’re cursed. We willingly submitted ourselves to a fucking blood curse. Surely, if there were a way, I would have done it. The removal, that is. Not the killing you.”

His eyebrows lowered, lips twitching as if fighting the urge to smile.

“No—”

“You don’t want to kill me.” His smile began to spread.

“I didn’t say—”

He was certain his eyes sparkled. “You don’t hate me.”

“Tyr, I hate your guts.”

He shook his head, still grinning. “You don’t want me dead. You said so yourself.”

“Fuck off.” She plopped back down on the bed, allowing the arm that had been supporting her to relax at her side. She covered her eyes with both hands. “Now I have to kill you again just out of spite.”

Though her eyes were covered, he hoped she could hear the smile in his voice. “Sure, sure.” Then on a more serious note, his voice dropped. “It really can’t be removed? There’s nothing that can be done? Even with Ophir’s power?”

She released her palms from where the heels of her hands dug into her eyes, allowing them to thumb to her sides with irritation. “Our Blood Pact is a curse, Tyr. It breaks when we die. Ophir can manifest. Only death breaks the curse. We could kill Anwir to break it—”

“Then we’d all die.”

“Precisely.”

There was a simple elegance to the Blood Pact’s cleverness. Mutually assured destruction kept them in line. It was much like a witch’s poppet created to be stuck with pins, except the object was the giver, and the subject was the receiver. If Dwyn killed Tyr, she would die. When she’d burned his hand, her own had melted into his. Tit for tat, no action could be committed from one member of the gang by another without reciprocal consequence. This was why she hadn’t taken Ophir’s power directly. It hadn’t been altruism. It hadn’t been love or affection or kindness. It was because Dwyn feared that if she carved out Ophir’s heart and ascended, everyone in the Blood Pact might stand to benefit. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. Anwir seemed to believe it to be true, and she would be damned if she gave him the chance to be right. The curse that bonded her with every member in their fucking blood gang reminded her of it every time she looked at her leg.

In the race for blood magic, there would be no tying for first.

If she and Ophir reigned as partners, Dwyn could possess a heart by proxy. Anwir and his Sulgrave Blood Pact gained nothing.

“You didn’t even try other methods?” he prodded. “You could have trapped Anwir in a cave for ten thousand years—”

“And if he got sick? If he starved to death? Since I was the one who enacted the trapping—”

“I get it.” A long pause stretched between them. “Dwyn?”

“Hmm?” She didn’t look at him.

“Put some clothes on.”

“You’re such a prude.” Her eyes then landed on him, widening. Her hand flew to her mouth just as it dropped open. “You’re attracted to me!”

He closed his eyes and faced the ceiling again. “You’re a naked woman next to me in bed. And learning you wouldn’t murder me is pretty much your equivalent of a compliment. It’s not my fault that your foreplay is twisted.”

She punched him, and he smiled, keeping his eyes closed. “Go to bed, dog.”

“See you at dawn, witch.”