“I’m still intent on killing you, if given the chance,” I warn past clenched teeth.
“Don’t forget to cut off my head,” he murmurs. “Or I’ll haunt you for eternity.”
“I don’t believe in that.”
Not one bit. I’ve cut off very few heads in comparison to my rather large body count, and I’m yet to see a single spirit claw at me from the shadows.
He lifts a brow. “Then what do you believe in?” he asks, his voice guttural.
“Revenge.”
All the warmth sputters from his eyes, like part of him just slipped away. “Revenge is the loneliest deity of them all, Moonbeam. Take it from someone who knows.”
I open my mouth to speak again, but Bhea cuts in. “If I’m to do this properly, it will take a while. And it will hurt. The cuts are deep. She will have to relive the pain while I mend the damage.”
I realize she’s not warning me, her eyes able to see what most others cannot.
She’s warning him.
“She can do it,” he rumbles, gaze challenging me to do just that.
With my nod, Bhea begins etching her runes, reversing the lifespan of my wounds one vile slash at a time. The King holds my stare as I’m stitched shut in over a hundred ways, though it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m being ripped wider—my insides bared.
Examined.
Perhaps because I’m used to doing this without an audience besides the Runi fixing me new. Without somebody else timing their breaths to my own, as though reminding me to breathe.
Without somebody else tightening their grip on my hands every time I flinch, wiping the sweat from my brow, rubbing tracks across my blanched knuckles as if to calm my rioting heart.
It’s a humble moment of peace despite the pain lancing through me. A quiet moment destined to scream.
It doesn’t matter how much of my skin is smoothed or how deep he kneels at my feet. I’m still an assassin marked for execution come aurora rise, and he’s still a tyrant king.
Iwas working on Allume’s wing stretches this dae, singing her a soft, calming song while extending the fine bones as far as they could go—which is now almost a full extension. She was getting restless, swinging her head around and nudging my side, looking at me with those massive glittery eyes. Like she was trying to say something. She even threw a little flame toward the entrance, which is very unlike her.
I now realize she was challenging it.
Suddenly, she began tilling her wings so fast her gammy one clipped me in the head and threw me back toward Haedeon’s chair. I skidded across the ground and landed amongst a pile of ice boulders Mah’s Moonplume Náthae had recently brought in because we think she might be broody.
I hit my head. Hard.
When I opened my eyes again, Allume was gone, but I could see her through the entrance—fluttering across the sky, light shafting off her brilliant silver hide. Could see her long silken tail dusting the dim with each wonky waggle of her wings. Could see the plumes of aqua flames she kept throwing skyward, accompanied by squealing shrieks. Like a victory cry to the moons.
To her ancestors.
I scrambled up to check on Haedeon …
He was smiling.
He looked me right in the eye and said “thank you” in a voice so rough I think the words might’ve hurt coming out, and I’ve never felt happiness so fierce.
For the first time since I climbed in Haedeon’s sleigh all those phases ago, I felt remarkable.
“Okay, that’s the last,” Bhea says, smoothing an oil over my back—her hands soft and tender, rubbing all the tension from my now-healed flesh.
Battling the urge to groan with relief, I open my eyes, looking straight into a pair of intense cinder orbs, a line dug between the King’s thick brows.
“You okay?” he asks, tightening his hold on my clammy hands.
“I’m great,” I slur, tugging them from his grip.
Never better. So glad he tortured me back to health during my last living moments. What a way to go out. Fitting, but a bit shit.
I lean back so I can lift my hands up over the chair’s headrest without snagging my chain and take the towel slung over his shoulder. The one he’s been using to dab at my forehead whenever sweat beaded down into my lashes.
“I’ll get my fine-tipped prongs for the pin,” Bhea says while I stuff my face in the towel, scrubbing the tension from around my eyes, hearing the sound of her footsteps before she begins rummaging through something.
Her words finally sink past the fog currently clouding my head.