Page 20 of Delphine's Dilemma

I sighed. “This isn’t right. None of this is right.”

Would I find more if I pushed deeper into the palace? What other secrets could I uncover? Though I wanted to know more, the desire to return to Delphine ate at me until it was all I could think about. I knew why she hated the sight of me, but I didn’t think there was any future in which I could go without her now.

I needed Delphine in my life. I yearned for her unafraid company, even if she decided to pull the trigger and plant a crossbow bolt in my heart. I would accept it if I could feel her lips on mine just one more time.

“I won’t fail you this time,” I whispered to her as if she were here.

Delphine

Now was my chance.I ran back to my private domain and started working on wards that would keep Arven out. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought him here in the first place. The taste of him lingered on my lips. I rubbed at my mouth with the back of my hand as I furiously drew on the floor with chalk.

This mission was over. I couldn’t go back to that city. If Locke Balefire ever appeared in another city, I would consider picking the job back up. That was if someone else didn’t take the bounty. It was a good sum of money. I would be missing out on good income…

Hands flat against the floor, I sighed and groaned. I could afford to skip this job. I told myself this over and over, but I really hated leaving any loose ends. Locke knew that I was after him. He’d gone to my home and tried to hunt me back to that chain restaurant earlier. If I hadn’t returned here, to my domain, he might have found me again.

So long as he knew I was on his trail, he would be looking for me. I couldn’t spend my life knowing yet another man was trying to find me. It would drive me insane.

I was already hanging onto sanity by a frail thread as it was.

“What are you doing?” Arven asked over my shoulder.

I yelped and spun. My crossbow bolt materialized in my hand, and I pulled the trigger without thinking. Arven shoved my arm aside, and the bolt sped past his head. The little wolpertinger on his other shoulder squealed in fear.

My stomach sank when I realized I could have hit the little animal. I turned a glare towards Arven. This was his fault for sneaking up on me. And it was my fault for not finishing the ward against him in time. He’d found his way back here.

“You’ll have to find another way to kill me,” Arven said, nonchalantly.

I mused on those words and agreed wholeheartedly. Perhaps I could kill two birds at once, or however that saying went. Since Arven was clearly embedded up my ass, it should be easy to do away with him before I dealt with Locke.

A plan hatched in the back of my mind. It brought a grin to my face. If Arven noticed, he didn’t say anything. The man seemed distracted. I could almost see ghosts in his eyes. He lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. There was a patinaed gold residue on his skin that made me tilt my head curiously.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nowhere.”

That was a lie, and we both knew it.

“You’re too honest of a man,” I said before I could stop myself.

Though I wanted to backtrack and deny it, I was right. There’d never been a point where Arven fed me a lie until now. The man had been an open book this entire time. Not once had he offered a disingenuous tale.

I scowled at him now that I was uncomfortable with my own discovery. Arven shouldn’t have been this man, the one standing in front of me. He should have been a monster with a temper and a taste for battle…but I was starting to look like that monster instead.

“Then you will have to live with the fact that I do not wish to talk about it just yet,” Arven replied.

I opened my mouth to argue, but I had nothing. He’d been honest. He just wasn’t ready to talk about whatever was on his mind. I had no other choice but to close my mouth and wipe away the ward on my floor.

Tomorrow, I would kill him. I would slip a poison into his food and be done with him once and for all. The evening would give me time to consider where I might hide his body. Would I take it to a far-flung jungle and leave him to rot in the monster-filled waters? Or would I drop him into a fae realm teeming with nightmares?

I couldn’t let Faust, the Nightmare King, anywhere near Arven. The pookah liked to collect fallen warriors and add their spirits to his army. If he got ahold of Arven, Faust would be unstoppable. No one needed that to happen.

Jungle sounded like the better idea.

A different kind of nightmare claimed me that night. I tossed and turned, slipping in and out of a horror playing inside my mind. Every time I sank back into sleep, memories of the siege would come rushing back. I found myself in that hallway with the ogre bearing down on me again.

I would turn and run, but he would always be faster. I woke right before he grabbed me, but not before my feeble body betrayed me in the nightmare. My legs weren’t meant for running. My arms didn’t know how to swing a weapon. I had nothing in my hands to defend myself with.

Every time I reached for my crossbow, my palm would remain empty. There was no time for a curse to leave my lips for the ogre filled my vision with his vicious grin. I felt his hand wrap around my throat.

---