Page 224 of Lady of Ashes

“Enough,” the Sorceress hissed. “I will tell you no more. Not without payment.”

“Fair enough,” Scarlett conceded. Before anyone could utter another word, Scarlett had a dagger slashing across her palm. She shoved her hand through the bars of the cell, her blood dripping onto the Marks the Sorceress had drawn.

“No!” the Sorceress wailed, dropping to the ground and trying to wipe the Marks away, but all she managed to do was smear Scarlett’s blood across the ground.

“What are you doing?” Sorin demanded, yanking Scarlett’s hand back out of the bars.

“Cass, search for a Mark,” Scarlett called out, her gaze dropping to the ?oor, searching. Only he would be able to see it besides her.

“What kind of—”

Scarlett looked up when Cassius sucked in a breath. She followed his gaze to the wall at the end of the room where a faint Mark was shimmering in the torchlight.

“Clever of you,” she remarked to the Sorceress, drawing her dagger once more. She cut her palm again, dipping a ?nger into her blood. She began to draw a new Mark over the shimmering one.

“You would not have known of it if you did not have my book,” the Sorceress cried, still on her knees on the ground. “I cannot use this now,” she wailed, dragging blood and dirt stained hands down her face, blood smearing across her cheeks. “You have ruined everything. I have nothing any more. No more debts to call in. Nothing.”

Scarlett stepped back when she ?nished the Mark she was drawing. It ?ared slightly before fading, and Scarlett tentatively touched her ?ngertips to the stone. When they met no resistance, she pressed her hand into the compartment that had been concealed with an illusion Mark. Withdrawing it, she held a necklace in her hands, the symbol of Sera?na, goddess of dreams and stars, carved of nightstone hanging from a chain of white.

“Thank you for your help,” Scarlett said, pocketing the amulet.

The Sorceress grabbed the bars, dragging herself forward. “Achaz sent his deadliest seraphs here to hunt them down. He will wipe you all from the face of this world and all the others, and he will make them watch while he does it. He will reward me for being faithful, and when I have retrieved my book, I will bring you back from the After to drain your blood again myself,” she hissed.

Scarlett slowly lowered to a crouch before the Sorceress, so that she stared directly into violet eyes. “I do not know who Achaz is, but I am going to kill every single one of the seraphs he has sent here. I have already started,” she said in a deadly soft tone. “And if he comes for me himself when I am done, I will kill him too.”

“You cannot kill him. He cannot die,” the Sorceress spat back.

A smile as chilling as death itself tilted up on Scarlett’s lips. She grasped the Sorceress’s hands over top of the shirastone bars, squeezing so the stone bit into the female’s skin even more. She hissed, but Scarlett did not release her, bringing her face right up to the Sorceress’s. “Then he can live on as ashes beneath my feet.”

Scarlett pushed off the bars. She strode for the stairs, the three males falling into place behind her.

“You are not a goddess,” the Sorceress called after her. “You cannot stop this.”

Scarlett paused at the base of the stairs, glancing back over her shoulder. “Perhaps a goddess cannot stop this, but a Lady of Darkness can.”

The Sorceress was left shrieking on her knees as Scarlett climbed the stairs, the Sorceress’s screams echoing off the walls.

CHAPTER 44

SORIN

Sorin looked down at his wife. She was sleeping beside him, entirely bare, silver hair mussed and fanned around her against the dark bedding, and looking thoroughly and utterly sated.

Which had been the plan.

Scarlett had Traveled them straight from the Underwater Prison to the Wind Court. Princess Ashtine had been waiting in the grand foyer as though she’d been expecting them. Maybe she had been. Maybe Scarlett had sent her a message when she’d arranged that escapade with Briar. Scarlett had asked to go to the chamber behind the nightstone doors, and when Ashtine had led them there, Scarlett had spent the next half hour trying to call that man to appear in the mirror gate. He hadn’t seen her like that in … Well, not since she’d been a whirlwind of wrath when he’d told her he’d known she was royalty and kept it from her.

But that had been rage roiling off of her in waves when he did not appear. He hadn’t needed their bond to feel it. Apparently, neither had Briar or Cassius. They’d all hung back, watching as she became more and more agitated. Her voice had risen from annoyed to screams of frustration, but when she had thrown that amulet she’d manipulated from the Sorceress across the godsdamn room, Sorin had ?nally stepped in.

Or he’d tried to at least.

She’d brushed him off, ignored his questions, both the ones he’d spoken aloud and the ones he’d tried to ask down their bond. Cassius had shot him a look telling him to let her be, and while he’d hated it, he’d complied. She’d then proceeded to pull books offthe shelves, lea?ng through them before tossing them aside. And seeing her handle ancient books like that was what had pushed Princess Ashtine over the edge.

In a hard voice he rarely heard from the Wind Princess, she’d informed his queen in no uncertain terms that should she throw one more item in that chamber, she would not be returning to the catacombs beneath her Citadel.

Scarlett had apologized in a hushed tone before lowering to her knees and scouring the books on the lower shelves with much more care. After three hours of seemingly nothing, she had risen and walked from that chamber without a godsdamn word.

And all he could think about for much of that time, was how he had just watched her go head-to-head with the Sorceress and come away the victor.

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