A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Forty-six

Forty-six

7:30 PM

11 hours and 15 minutes until execution

Dwyn was fucking furious. Venom dripped from her every movement as she aimed to maim, to wound, to come as close to killing as she could. She’d see his body in a withered husk before he could blink, were it not for this piece-of-shit dog and his piece-of-shit tattoo and her piece-of-shit terrible goddess-damned judgment that had led her to ever inking her skin in the first place.

Shame at having been not only discovered but tricked burned hotter than the princess’s flame ever had.

Dwyn had lowered her guard for the barest of moments thinking that the two of them could work together, could collaborate, might even be on the same side, and the moment she closed her eyes, he’d vanished. She’d yawned into consciousness that morning with a smile on her lips and the naive belief that, for the first time in decades, she had an ally.

Of course, he’d been playing her for a fool.

Of course, he’d only pretended to be kind, to be her friend, to be on her side because he’d already learned what she’d fought so hard to hide.

She’d looked at the cold rumple in the sheets where he’d lain only hours prior and known why he’d left. She’d let her guard down for scarcely more than an hour and he’d betrayed her. An hour during which she’d rested and recovered because she had done the hard work, she had exerted herself to the extents of her limit, she had carried him to the corners of the world and taken the barest of reprieves in order to recuperate. He’d deciphered the plan she’d so cleverly disguised. She thought he’d been tracking her for all these years like a stray dog without a master, all the while he’d been piecing together the most glorious plan Gyrradin had ever known.

His dash to Ophir had given him away.

She’d gag him by any means necessary to keep him from ruining what she had with Ophir, if it was the last thing she did.

Her mistake had been in trusting him, if even for a second.

His mistake had been not letting the prisoner finish the job.

Dwyn had her borrowed strength long enough to drag Tyr across the courtyard and halfway down the stairs into the dungeon before the stolen ability evaporated from her arms. He wasn’t fully unconscious, and for that she was grateful. She wasn’t sure if she’d still be standing if she’d successfully knocked him out.

Fuck .

She cried out the moment the pain of his weight crashed into her arms. The dog was awake. Fuck, fuck, fuck .

Dwyn was unable to stifle the grunt the moment his full weight hit her, barely jumping out of the way in time for gravity to take him the rest of the way down the stairs. She pressed herself into the wall of the stairwell as she watched him hit the bumps, the curve, the twist in the stairs as it curved just out of sight. The sounds came to an end the moment he hit the landing.

She just needed to figure out how to get him into a cell. She had to stay conscious, stay strong, stay present just long enough to lock him away.

The noxious cloud of unwashed bodies, piss, and waste washed over her. The heat exacerbated the unbearable scents of the dungeon. She sucked in a breath with her mouth, refusing to breathe through her nose as she looked around for a solution.

Her head still buzzed from the blow she’d landed against him.

Her plan wasn’t working. She was still feeling every hit, every move, every fucking connection. Even with her shield, her healing, and the strength she’d stolen, the Blood Pact’s binding seal reverberated through her, threatening to drag her under. If she was this affected from striking him in the nose even with her arsenal of rapidly expended power, she didn’t dare wound him further. Come on, come on , she willed herself, desperate to shove him into a cell and slam the iron bars behind him.

The dungeons were dimly lit—the fae lights being a kindness rather than the sort of torches that might add heat to an already sweltering space. Dwyn hurried down the stairs and eyed the prisoners. Several of them clambered to be closer to the bars, desperate for pity, for sympathy, for a chance at release. One man leaned against the slots of his cage and whistled. It took two seconds and one vulgar word for her to know exactly who she was draining.

The disgusting, predatory prisoner sparkled with delight when she approached him. Her eyes had twinkled for an entirely separate reason. She extended her slender fingers toward his face and he raised an eyebrow, as if in any universe a beautiful woman would saunter into a dungeon and be sexually interested by a strange prisoner. He was stupid enough to deserve the withering death that befell him.

The others in the prison screamed as they watched her suck him dry with her prolonged touch. She whirled on them, telling them that if they weren’t silent, she’d come for them next. One cried out with righteous indignation that he knew a witch when he saw one. Her eyes burned, but he did not look away. She didn’t have time to bother with him now. It had been the only threat she needed to buy their compliance. No one made a sound. Now to get Tyr—

Shit .

He was gone. Could she not catch a fucking break? She gritted her teeth, scanning the jail frantically for any nook, any cranny he could have used to hide. If he’d stepped into the place between things…

That was it. She used the life she’d stolen from the prisoner and called upon the ability to rightly see. The moment they made eye contact, he smiled, and she realized her mistake.

She’d used her borrowed ability too soon.

She was useless.

There was no water down here. She had nothing in her reserves. She was as helpless as every other goddess-forsaken prisoner in this dungeon as she waited for Tyr to deliver her fate.

***

Tyr closed the space between them in three seconds flat. Dwyn barely had time to react as he grabbed her, twisting her away so that her back was pressed into his chest. He pinned her throat between his forearm and bicep, pinching off her blood flow. She’d be unconscious in a matter of seconds.

“Stop!” she gasped.

Dizziness overtook him, just as he’d known it would. The bond was the only reason she’d lived this long, but she’d survived one breath too many. He only needed to outlast the curse a single second longer than Dwyn.

An idea struck him. Tyr made eye contact with the lone prisoner who’d dared to defy her. They were united for a single moment against a witch. Nothing else mattered. Perhaps he couldn’t kill her, but a hateful stranger sure as hell could.

Tyr slammed Dwyn backward into the metal. Her head struck the iron, reverberating as stars filled her vision—an impact he knew was successful because of the white and orange dots that clouded his ability to see. The prisoner grabbed her in the same moment Tyr released her throat. All he needed to do was hold her wrists. He wasn’t responsible for her death, just for her inability to drain him. The scourge of their bond was magically sealed, but everything had a loophole.

So he thought.

The prisoner’s arm wrapped around her neck as Tyr held her wrists tightly.

He watched as Dwyn’s eyes popped in fear.

He saw the life drain from her face.

He saw the moment she realized she was going to die.

And he knew that Dwyn couldn’t tell that he was losing consciousness just as quickly.

Of course.

He was still responsible for her death. But if he could stay on his feet until the last possible second… It was Dwyn calling the flame and fusing his fingers together all over again—he could tolerate whatever she could take. If he could just outlast her.

She managed to sputter three final words. “I’ll teach you!”

“What?” He grunted against the hold, struggling to sound stable.

She thrashed, fighting him with everything she possessed. Her shoulder blades rolled off the iron. Her hips thrust up and away from the bars. She attempted to kick, but he pressed himself into her, preventing her from moving away from where the prisoner held her in his death grip. He could see it in her dark, panicked eyes: she thought he’d finally found a loophole. She couldn’t even gasp for air. A few more moments, and she’d be on the ground.

Dwyn said it again, each word weaker than the one before, as if her sentence were being pulled under the depths of the sea into the blackened pits of its trenches. “I’ll teach you to drain.”

He knew he had less than ten seconds before he joined her on the floor. He’d die the moment she took her last breath. But she didn’t know that.

He released her wrists, and her hands flew to the crease between his arm and hers where the prisoner held her in a chokehold, fingers digging into her skin as she drained him. The shock on the imprisoned man’s face disappeared along with his blood, his flesh, his soul. Soon he was little more than a mummified memory. Dwyn panted as she looked at Tyr. He knew from the frenzied panic on her face that she fully believed he’d found a way to kill her.

He held the upper hand for a second longer.

Tyr eyed her with lethal stillness, knowing that if he wavered, if he showed a single hint that he’d been a moment from death, their deal would be off.

He hadn’t understood it when Zita and Tempus had fought in her room. He hadn’t known at the party, or when he’d watched Ophir and her guards in the dungeon, but the moment Dwyn had populated into his vision with deadly intent, he knew precisely what she’d done. He understood Berinth, he understood the hypnosis, he understood Caris’s mutilation and blood magic and manipulation and villainy and every horrible thing all at once.

His mouth began working before he’d let it sink in. He met Dwyn’s still-frantic gaze with cool gravity as he cast his final piece of leverage.

“You teach me to drain, and I won’t tell Ophir that you’re the puppet master.”