Page 105 of A Chill in the Flame
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 joinedher 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.”
Forty-seven
12:15 AM
6 hours and 30 minutes until execution
“So?” Ophir’s heart skipped. She leapt from the bed the moment her door cracked open and padded toward the center of the room. Relief was overdue. She’d been unable to relax as Tyr wandered about the palace with her translation cuff. It was impossible to know what he would or wouldn’t learn, but her imagination played an infinite loop of worst-case scenarios. She’d almost made a new vageth just to have something to play with that might distract her, but she didn’t know how she’d get rid of it when someone other than Tyr entered her room. She’d struggled to pass the time, nibbling on a few of the crescent-shaped cookies filled with cinnamon, nuts, sugar, and a tart orange marmalade, but rather than finishing any of them, she just took singular bites out of three separate pastries to see if they’d all taste the same. Her table was now a graveyard dedicated to abandoned, half-eaten cookies. Her throat knotted when she saw that Tyr was not alone.
“Dwyn?”
“Firi!” Dwyn’s face lit with delight. She ran to the princess and threw her arms around her. Ophir blinked in surprise, failing to return the hug. The wave of mint hit her along with a bucket of memories, of being slapped on a windswept cliff,of being doused with water when night terrors had engulfed her in flame, of being told she’d tasted like sunshine between the sheets. Dwyn seemed unbothered by her disconnect. The fae gripped both of Ophir’s shoulders and observed her at arm’s length. “Oh my goddess, I don’t know much about the fashion in Tarkhany, but please tell me you’ll start to wear this dress when we get back to Farehold. Have one made in every color.”
Ophir was once again very aware of just how exposed she felt in the sheer fabric. She gathered her thoughts. “But, nothing has changed. You still lied.”
Dwyn straightened her shoulders. “You’re right.”
The admission caught Ophir utterly off kilter.
“I wouldn’t have saved you from drowning if you’d been a random maiden swimming beneath the moonlight,” Dwyn went on. “I traveled to Farehold because I was motivated by power, and for no other reason. But then I met you, Ophir, and I’ve meant everything I’ve said since our night on the beach. I’m committed to keeping you safe. I’m determined to help you step into your magic. If I told you I didn’t care about you, it would be the only outright lie to leave my lips. Let me be here for you, Firi, however you need me.”
Her words struggled to keep up with her thoughts. “So, you aren’t...”
“I’m not pretending to be anything I’m not. Tyr thinks I’m a power-hungry bitch? He spoke the truth. I came for your potential. I stayed for the woman who possessed it. Now, have we crossed the desert to make Tarkhany our bitch, or what’s the plan?” Dwyn winked.
Ophir pressed her index fingers into her temples. “I thought Tyr—”
