Page 128 of Cherish

Seconds later, a shadowy rope wraps itself around my throat and starts to squeeze, closing my airway off a little more with each second that passes. I slowly shift to a portion of my gargoyle form, just enough that the stone helps keep the rope from constricting my airway too much.

I should probably start panicking right about now, except I don’t feel very panicked. One, I still feel like we’ve got the upper hand despite the fact that I’m slowly being strangled. And two, I know Hudson and the rest of my friends will step in the second they think I need them to.

I’m actually surprised Jaxon hasn’t already tackled the Shadow Queen and tried to pry her shadow whip off my neck. Hudson is balanced on his toes, ready to step in the second I make any indication that he should, but he’s holding back right now because I haven’t asked for his help. Jaxon, on the other hand, tends to leap before he looks.

A quick glance his way tells me I’m right, that it’s taking every ounce of willpower he has not to intervene. I hold a hand out to him in a slow-your-roll gesture, then lock eyes with the Shadow Queen and wait her out.

Because she’s smart and I can tell she’s already thinking, can tell she’s desperately trying to figure out how—

“How do you know about Lorelei?” she demands.

I gesture to the shadow she still has wrapped around my neck—the universal sign forI can’t exactly talk at the moment.

She narrows her eyes, and for a second, the pressure gets worse, cutting off my air completely. But then, with an angry hiss, she pulls her hand back. Instantly, the shadow drops away from my neck, and I pull in several deep breaths.

“How dare you speak of my daughter when you don’t know anything about her,” she hisses, and now there’s nothing slow in the way she walks toward me.

She doesn’t stop until we’re nose to nose, but that’s fine with me. Bruised trachea or not, I’m more than ready to take a concrete swing at the Shadow Bitch myself. For what she’s done to Mekhi, for what she had done to my friends and me when we were arrested, and definitely for what she allowed her other daughter to do to Lorelei.

“I know plenty about her,” I snarl back. “It’s why I’m here, after all. It’s the bargain I want to strike.”

“Don’t you dare involve my daughters in your scheme,” she tells me. But her voice is shaky, and her beautiful purple skin has turned a sickly lavender gray.

“I didn’t involve your daughters,” I snap at her, my own fury welling up inside me. “You did, a thousand years ago. And your tunnel vision nearly killed an entire species. So don’t you dare stand there and try to take the moral high ground with me.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow she gets even paler. Even so, there’s no guilt in her eyes for the thousands of gargoyles whose millennium-long imprisonment she is directly responsible for, for the thousands of others who died from her poison. No remorse for the suffering of Mekhi and Lorelei or the suffering and deaths of my friends in Adarie at the hands of her maniacal time wizard of a husband. The same husband she convinced to cast the spell that led all of us here, to this very moment.

The knowledge that she doesn’t feel bad about any of the pain she’s caused, any of the death and destruction at her feet, enrages me. It makes me want to say to hell with these negotiations and leave her alone in a nightmare of her own making.

But the only people who will get hurt if we walk away now are the people who can least afford it. Mekhi, who grows closer to death with each hour that passes. And Lorelei, who’s had to suffer with a fraction of a soul’s life force for nearly a thousand years.

So I tamp down the fury scraping away at my insides and say, “I know how to separate your daughters’ souls, which is something you—for all your power—can’t do. So I’ll give you one more chance to make a bargain with me that will sever them in exchange for my friend’s life. All you have to do is decide if you want to take it or leave it.”

70

Screwed and

Newly Tattooed

At first, she doesn’t answer, and I’m terrified that I blew it. That I let anger get the better of me and that innocent people will suffer for it.

But then Hudson rests a hand on my lower back, and I can feel him lending me his strength and his resolve. Macy moves closer to me on my other side, until her upper arm presses against mine, and despite all the pain inside her, I can feel her steadiness and her determination to be there for me.

Together—along with the belief I can feel coming from all my friends—they give me the strength to keep my eyes locked with the queen’s.

The strength to not apologize and not back down.

The strength to call her freaking bluff.

And call it I do, as long seconds turn into longer minutes and the tension in the air gets so taut that it feels like any wrong move will shatter it. Will have pain and regrets pouring down on me like shards of the sharpest broken glass.

But then, just when I decide this is the hill the Shadow Queen is going to die on, she yields.

“Come sit with me,” she says in a voice as empty as the eyes I’ve been staring into for far too long.

She shuffles back to her throne, her walk a million times more labored than it was when she came forward to meet us.

There’s nowhere for me to sit—her throne is isolated and alone in the direct center of the room—but I won’t bend enough to mention it. Which ends up working out fine, because two members of the Shadow Guard take care of it before we get there.

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