Carnival of Souls

element and the standard inability to disobey to the spell, so you can enjoy him without the inconvenience of listening to him.” Evelyn shook out her napkin and smoothed it over her lap. “It’s still a draining spell, so we need to eat first.”

“Do you know Adam Rothesay?”

“So you’ve found out about Marchosias’ child.” Evelyn gestured to the chair again.

Aya sat.

“My brother, Adam—”

“Your brother,” Aya echoed.

After an almost imperceptible pause, Evelyn said, “Yes. Does that matter?”

Aya weighed the details. She’d learned years ago that the daimons she’d thought were family weren’t hers by blood, but she’d cared for them all the same. In contrast, she had little affection for the witch who had borne her.

“This is the Watcher child? This Adam’s decision to raise her wasn’t because she’s half witch, right?” Aya prompted.

“No, she is fully daimon, although Adam has suppressed that for her whole life. Her mother was a Watcher, and Marchosias is her blood father.”

Even as Aya knew that Evelyn was studying her reactions, she couldn’t fully hide them. Her usual stoicism was undermined by what Evelyn had casually revealed about Belias and about Mallory. Belias was about to be bound to her or die, and she had a cousin of a sort, who had just been married without her consent to a daimon that Aya was bound to aid.

She’s not family by blood, and I don’t know her, and she’s not a witch, so the dangers of breeding are not the same for her. Sure, there were the usual risks, especially for Marchosias’ daughter. His heirs tended to be murdered young, and childbirth had a critically high fatality rate in the ruling caste.

“I need to meet her.” Aya lifted the glass in front of her and took a sip of water to combat her unexpectedly dry mouth.

“The girl is useful to you, daughter,” Evelyn said. “If you can get her protection, it will aid our purposes. Adam did much to make her sympathetic to witches — enough that you can reveal what you are and that no one over there knows. It will make you her sole confidant, the one she turns to when things become worse.”

Not for the first time, Aya was grateful that her mother — for the most part — didn’t plot against her. Mallory was like the lamb offered to warring gods. She’d been taken and raised by witches who hated daimons; she was nothing more than a vessel to bear the next generation of Marchosias’ heirs; and she was the key to a safer future for Kaleb.

And she is useful to me.

That was Evelyn’s intention — at least, that was the most obvious of Evelyn’s intentions. Aya wasn’t so naive as to think that there weren’t other motivations too. Her mother’s machinations were a credit to her species.

“Finish that, and we’ll do the spell,” Evelyn directed.

They ate in silence, and then Aya gave in to the impulse that Evelyn undoubtedly expected.

“I need to see Belias before we do this.” Aya stood and walked to the door. Evelyn didn’t follow, which was as close to agreeing as she would come. The affection Aya had for Belias was a weakness. She knew it as well as her mother did. If he escaped and went to The City, she’d be exposed for cheating in Marchosias’ Competition — worse still, she’d be exposed as a witch.

Everything reasonable, every bit of witch instinct in her, compelled her to let Evelyn destroy Belias, but he was hers. Whether he still loved her or not, he was the only person she’d loved. He was the one person she’d considered confessing to, but he hated witches. She’d hoped to avoid his ever knowing, but they were too far past that now. Her options had shifted when they’d been matched to fight or maybe when they’d been matched to wed. All that Aya knew now was that they were once more down to a set of options that included one of their deaths.

“I need his permission,” Aya said.

Evelyn didn’t look at her. Instead, she carefully folded her napkin as she said, “I’ll be over momentarily. He’ll be bound to you, or he’ll be used for harvest.”

CHAPTER 27

BELIAS THOUGHT HE WAS better prepared to see Aya this time, but when she walked into the room that was his prison, he still felt the flurry of happiness that seeing her had caused for most of his life. This time, however, it was pushed down by fury. He did his best to keep his face expressionless as he came to his feet. He wasn’t sure how he felt. This was Aya. They’d shared most of their lives; they’d loved each other. She’d also stabbed him.

He wanted to believe that she was still the daimon he loved, but she wasn’t. She was one of them — a witch — the creatures who’d killed his father, who polluted The City. Her mother was a picture-perfect example of all of the things that had led to the witches being expelled from The City. She was monstrous, clear in her disdain for daimons and at ease with cruelty — and he wasn’t seeing a lot of evidence just then that his former betrothed was much different.

“Why are you here?” Belias’ hand dropped to the knife at his hip. “I’ve already been told the terms: your slave or death.”

“I don’t want this,” Aya told him. “The idea of you being bound to obey my will is far from anything I’ve ever dreamed of.”

Although he knew better, although he didn’t know if anything she said was even true, he couldn’t help but ask, “What have you dreamed of then?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Aya walked to the circle, entered it as if it didn’t exist, and stood in front of him. It was a challenge and an offer.

Belias caught her by the shoulder and spun her so that her back was to his chest. He released her shoulder and wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her still. His other arm stretched crosswise across her chest and in that hand he held the knife that had been left in his possession. The tip of the blade was to her throat but hadn’t broken the skin.

He could try to kill her, avenge himself and punish her. That would result in his death too, presumably after torture. He didn’t believe that choosing death was the solution, with or without vengeance. If he had believed thusly, he could’ve taken his own life with the knife he held. Foolishly, he still wasn’t any surer that he could kill her now than he had been when they fought in the competition. He sighed. “Is this where we are, little bird? I have to threaten you for answers. You poison me, imprison me, enslave me.”

She was silent so long that he figured that this was another of the conversations that led nowhere, but finally she sighed. “I don’t want either of us enslaved or dead, Bel.”

“I never wanted to enslave you,” he reminded her. “Marriage isn’t slavery. Being a witch’s familiar is.”

“I sent you to this world because I couldn’t kill you. Bringing your body here through a summoning circle meant I didn’t have to kill you or explain that I hadn’t really killed you.”

“Or forfeit,” he added.

“Or that.” She was tense against his body, but she didn’t try to escape. If anything, she seemed almost content to be there. “Are you going to kill me?”

“You aren’t even trying to escape,” he half complained. Fighting with Aya had been a prelude to more than a few wonderful nights. Despite everything, he still wanted that. It was a perversion to want a witch, and it was definitely wrong to want the witch who had enslaved him. “What? Are you going to let me kill you?”

“If I wanted free of you, I wouldn’t need to fight.” She said the words like a confession, and in her voice, he heard the weight of the secrets she’d kept from him.

He didn’t want to feel sorry for her though. She had done this to him, to them. “More magic,” he spat.

“Yes,” she confirmed.