Page 80 of The Bones of Benevolence

I lunged, my hand closing around his throat as I leaned over the desk, completely dwarfing him as I pulled him to his feet. He sputtered, wide-eyed as he stared at me in surprise.

“Why?” I spat through a tight jaw.

He answered only with garbled choking sounds, his hands clawing uselessly at my grip. I pulled him over the desk by his throat, papers fluttering to the ground as I dragged his body across.

His eyes began to bulge from his head, and I knew I could kill him in one swift move. But before I sent him straight to the fires of Hell that waited beneath the Iron Rise, I wanted to knowwhy. I loosened my grip enough for the air to rush back into his lungs.

“Tell me,” I demanded. My voice was low and controlled, and I relished the fear it brought to his features.

He was gasping, trying to pull in as much air as he could while my palm still compressed his airway. “She…was…only…getting in the way.”

I threw him clear across the room and watched as his body slammed into the dark wood walls. He landed on the marble floor, his head cracking against the stone, choked whimpers leaving his crushed airway as he tried to speak. “Th-this…is bigger than her, Cal.” He pushed himself to stand, straightening himself as he pushed his shoulders back with a wince. “It’s bigger than us.”

I was moving before I knew it, the bastard pinned to the wall beneath my arm in an instant, my sword pointed to his chest. “Youkilledher,” I seethed. “You murdered the woman you loved.”

“She was compromising the mission.”

I pushed my sword forward, the tip easily slicing through his surcoat, piercing the skin beneath it. His face contorted with pain as blood began to ooze from the wound that was begging to grow deeper. “Please, Cal. J-just hear me out.”

My hand found his neck again and I slammed his head against the wall hard enough that the impact alone could have ended his life. I wasn’t that lucky, of course, and I watched him fall into a daze, the bastard blinking hard, mouth opening and closing. I was feral with rage, my heartbeat like a war drum in my ears.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t slit your throat right now. One fucking reason,” I breathed. The Lord didn’t move, didn’t change his expression. He stayed silent, his eyes on me as if any fear he’d shown was simply gone. “I am your King and you will do as I command.”

One of his hands found its way into the pocket of his surcoat. If the fucker thought he was going to kill me, he would soon find he was sorely mistaken.

Instead he raised his hand to reveal a small vial, dark red liquid sloshing around inside — blood.

“Your blood,” he sputtered.

I narrowed my eyes, his face unreadable as it began to turn purple. “Myblood?”

“Kill me, and your blood will be sacrificed to the Darkness Beyond.”

I laughed, the sound harsh as I threw my head back. “You’re going to sacrifice my blood so I become a Bloodsinger like Umbri? Is that your plan?” The Lord stayed silent, his eyes only narrowing slightly as I held him within inches of his life. “You’re fucked if you think I’m letting you out of here to get to Blindbarrow.”

“Umbri has a vial of your blood already.” Even though he was dying within my grasp, his face melted into a nauseating smirk. “You kill me,” he choked, “Umbri pours that entire vial into the flame, and the Belin Cal Myrin you know will begone.”

“And how will Umbri know you’re dead?”

The smirk deepened. “She’s a Bloodsinger. The rules of this realm bend for her. She sees all. I give the command or die and you can say goodbye to the honorable and benevolent King Belin. I give the command or die, and you’re a ghost.”

Rage, anguish, and confusion twisted like vines around every fiber of my being. I breathed heavily through gritted teeth as I stared him down. “How?”

“You were sixteen.” His voice had turned derisive. “The day I took you to the pub in Sidus. You were piss drunk and had a little fall. You remember, right?” His tongue curled around the word like a serpent as the scar on my leg throbbed. “I knew you wouldn’t miss a vial or two.”

The urge to lunge, to shove my blade through his ribs and to crush his windpipe beneath my palm was so strong that surrendering to it seemed inevitable. Damn the consequences. But it wasn’t about me. The second my blood fizzled and sparked in that flame, my soul would forever be controlled by the Darkness Beyond, completely void of anything good, anything compassionate, anythingkind. The world would suffer.

Autumn Eyes,Petra,would suffer.

Hands shaking, I pulled my blade back and released my grip. He straightened and ran a hand across the spot of his blood that I’d spilled on his surcoat, the liquid such a dark shade of crimson that it looked black. I inhaled hard, my mouth set in a hard line as I sheathed my sword and glared.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he murmured, pulling at his cuffs, “but you so quickly lost sight of what’s at stake.”

“You wanted to marry her,” I snarled. “You would have if not for the law.”

He scoffed. “There’s no such law, Cal.”

“What?”

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