Page 256 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

I sat down in the chair before the bars, elbows on my knees. Behind me, Oraya slipped into the room too, lingering in the shadows against the wall.

I found it satisfying the way his face dropped with actual fear when he saw her. She found it satisfying, too—I sensed it alongside my own.

“So what, then?” he said. “You’ve come here to execute me yourself?”

He stood up, as if to prepare himself to meet death standing.

“No,” I said. “My time’s too valuable for that.”

Confusion flitted over Cairis’s face. “Then what?”

“Ketura and Vale wanted to execute you.” I nodded back toward Oraya. “Yourqueenwanted to execute you.”

Bloodthirsty little thing that she was.

“But,” I said, “I managed to convince them otherwise.”

His brow furrowed. “You—”

“I wanted to make sure I saw your face when the man you betrayed saved your life,” I said. “And I also wanted to make sure you knew it was no mercy. Actually, the queen that wanted to kill you was probably the merciful one.”

I stood, my silhouette casting a shadow over Cairis’s form. I towered over him. He wasn’t a small man, either—but he seemed it, now.

I supposed he always had been.

But how could he be anything but?

He’d spent his entire life in fear. He’d learned to survive by bending his spine to fit into his cages. For a while, he’d been able to make himself into something more.

For a while.

But as soon as he found himself staring down the possibility of being a slave again, he just couldn’t go back. No values were strong enough to supplant that fear.

I wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse that I understood it.

He lowered his eyes. There was shame—real shame—in them.

“I deserve to be executed,” he said.

“You do. That’s why you won’t be. That, and...” I cocked my head and smiled at him, wide enough to reveal my fangs. “I think you might be useful, one day. So you’ll be locked up in Tazrak. Spend a decade or four there, until I decide if I need you for something. People who have something to prove are the most useful kind.”

His eyes rose to meet mine again, round. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

“If you’re considering whether or not to thank me,” I said. “I think the answer is probably no.”

He shut his mouth. But he still said, a moment later, “Thank you.”

I chuckled. I started to turn away, but he said, “Do you really think you’re going to be able to make this work?”

I stopped. Oraya and I exchanged a glance.

I turned around. “This?” I questioned.

I saw it on Cairis’s face, the moment he saw Oraya’s back—the Heir Mark, visible above the low back of her blouse, before she, too, turned back to him.

His eyes widened.

I laughed softly and pulled open the top two buttons of my jacket—revealing my Mark, too.

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