Page 52 of Flight of Fate

“Hate me if you must, Ayna. But this is the best I can do.” To help not you but Myron. But I don’t add that to protect us all from the vengeance of ancient magic or Ephegos’s retaliation should he ever learn what I did.

Summon my true king to find his mate. Slice into the mate mark strongly enough to send a message. Pain. It might be the only sensation piercing through the dulled magic slumbering within the Crow Queen before me. How I hope I’m right.

I don’t wait for her to try to break free. She’d only hurt herself more. Instead, I offer some consolation, not that it makes any difference with what I’ve already done.

“I’ll make it look like I cut both sides.” She flinches, and my heart breaks. It fucking breaks, even though I never cared for any of the brides suffering and dying. I only cared about my freedom. But this womangaveme freedom. She found Myron worthy of her love. “If I smear enough blood and etch a thin line on your skin—nothing as deep as on the other side.” It’s a small reassurance, but it’s more than I believed I could speak without upsetting the deal with Ephegos.“I can make it look like I partly healed you, and no one will question why I carved the line on your other shoulder.”

I’mnothelping her, I keep telling myself. Nother.I’m helping Myron.

“Why?” Her voice is half wince, half defeat. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Because you saved us all, and I owe you the same thing you gave to me—freedom. I can never speak those words, so I say the next best thing—something that has nothing to do with her. “Because I did wrong by Myron. I didn’t trust him enough to believe when he said he knew what he was doing by bargaining away the right for new brides in exchange for the fairy princess’s help with your magic.”The way she looks at me, trying to decipher all the words unspoken… I’m so close to letting it all go to shit, bargain and all, when I remember that, if I don’t do this, nobody will. I can’t give myself up by laying bare all the emotions of conflict within me. Nothing will change if I die. Ephegos will roll on. Chances to stop him are better if I play along.

My chest tightens, air coming more heavily at the thought of betraying the Crow I swore loyalty to, and the familiar tang of iron coats my tongue at my traitorous thoughts.

I shut them down. Ephegos. I’m fulfilling Ephegos’s order, torturing Ayna.

With practiced ease, I shut down all emotions, turning to her forearm.

“I need more blood.”

The cut I make into her wrist is deeper than I intended, but at least, the magic of bargains will be satisfied. He saidhurther. He never said I couldn’t ease the pain. It only has to be for a reason serving Ephegos’s purpose… To be able to hurt her more later… More intact skin to slice open again.

The taste of blood disappears from my mouth, so I send healing magic after my blade as I paint her arm and shouldercrimson. There is no fight left in Ayna, and the image is killing me, even when I can’t allow it to.

Convincing myself it is to humiliate her more, I loosen my magic on her, watching her slump in the chair, but I wipe away a strand of hair, wanting to see her face as I tell her,“I’m sorry, Ayna. It’s the best I can do for you. I’m your ally. Probably the only one you have in this place, so play along. Pretend to hate me and curse me to your Guardians and back, to Eroth and Shaelak and even Vala. Just don’t be stupid enough to tell a soul I spared you.”

I wait for my mouth to fill with blood, to choke on it as I test the boundaries of the bargain.

Nothing happens.

But Ayna opens her mouth in a disgusted chuckle. “I wouldn’t call carving me open sparing me.”

Because I didn’t spare her the pain. I didn’t spare her the suffering. I merely used it to help Myron find her. If anyone can save her, it’s the king who saved us all by falling for this creature before me.

“It doesn’t matter what you’d call it. If I did everything right, you’ll understand soon enough.” I sit her back in her chair, unable to watch her nearly tumble off it. “Just trust me. Trust me like you trusted Myron.”

I never actually expect her to when I open the door to let in the guards who’ll report the state I left her in to Ephegos the moment they dropped her off in her quarters.

When I dive out of the memory, Kaira’s blinking away tears.

Thirty-Two

Myron

Ice creepsthrough my veins with every moment I’m watching Ayna through Herinor’s memory. So thin. So weak. And that was weeks before I saw her at Erina’s engagement party.

Talons shoot from my fingertips, nearly piercing Ayna’s skin before I can pull my hand from hers, and inside my chest, darkness coils, ready to strike. But at whom?

“It’s all right,” Ayna whispers, but when I turn toward her, I realize she’s not reassuring me but the traitor in our midst. The male who sold us out to save himself. And has been risking his own life to help us every damn day since.

“I’m sorry.” Herinor’s words are thick with tears, his gaze bouncing between Ayna, Kaira, and me. “I wish I could have done better, but this was the only way. Had I freed her, I’d have summoned the wrath of bargain magic.”

No one knows better the danger of said magic than I do after all those bargains I’ve struck with Recienne. After an entire life lived beneath the threat of a curse bleeding me to death, should I speak so much as a wrong word.

“You did what you needed to,” Ayna says, too valiant with the male who tortured her. The male who kept her from fleeingErina’s palace. Who stood by and listened in on the moment when Erina shoved a ring ontomyAyna’s finger.

“I did what a weak male would do.” No one corrects him, but the twist in Kaira’s shoulders tells me she was about to say something.

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