Lauren rose and moved toward us, her long dress flowing around her legs like the gray tendrils of a web. Definitely a dangerous, dark spider, I thought with another shiver.
But one who wasn’t entirely surprised or annoyed by my actions, if her expression was anything to go by. My gaze returned to Lucian. Maybe she wasn’t worried because she would still extract the price of the ward from him.
“A foolish choice, but one that she nevertheless has the right to make.” Her gaze came to mine. “You may yet regret this decision, however. There are worse things in this world—and the next—than this stone and the magic within it.”
“I’m more than aware of that, believe me.”
She wrapped her fingers around the ward, then raised it to eye level and contemplated the oily black surface. “It is a thing of beauty, is it not?”
I didn’t reply, but then, she didn’t seem to be expecting me to. She dropped the stone into her bag and then, with a glance at Lucian, turned and left.
I heaved a silent sigh of relief. One problem down, one silently seething Aedh to go. I hesitated, watching him, wondering if it was better to keep my distance, then shook the thought away. He might be angry, but he surely wouldn’t hurt me. After all, he needed me alive just as much as everyone else did. I walked around the counter. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back—”
The rest of the sentence was cut off as Lucian’s hand shot out and his fingers closed around my neck in a vise-like grip.
Chapter 12
Shock held me immobile for too many seconds. By the time my brain did start working, my lungs were burning and my head was pounding—a result of not only lack of air but Amaya’s scream of fury.
But there was also fear. Not because of the sheer and utter fury in his eyes, but because, for one instant, it felt like his fingers were going through my flesh. That he would, at any minute, rip my throat apart from the inside out.
“Do you know what you’ve just done?” He shook me with each word, as if to emphasize the point. “You just let what might be our one chance to win this race walk out the door!”
I made a gargling sound and kicked him. The blow was weak, ill aimed, and went unnoticed. Amaya, I thought, and flayed my hands back, trying to reach her. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength.
It didn’t matter. She burned through my flesh, answering my unspoken need.
Hurry, I thought, as spots began to dance in front of my eyes. Only they were spots that burned like fire. Furious, red-tinted blue fire.
Valdis, I realized dimly.
“I have been looking for an excuse to kill you for some time now, Aedh,” Azriel said softly. “If you do not immediately release her, I will have one.”
For a moment Lucian didn’t respond. Then the fury melted from his eyes and he blinked. A second later, I was a heap on the floor, coughing and spluttering and sucking in great gulps of air.
But I wasn’t on that floor alone for long—Amaya had finished her journey through my flesh and had appeared in my right hand, her shadowed steel spitting dark purple fire as she hissed her displeasure and need to kill. I gripped her, then surged to my feet and aimed her point at the middle of Lucian’s brow. My whole arm shook as I fought the urge to press farther, to let steel taste flesh and blood.
Amaya did not appreciate my restraint.
“And here I was thinking you’d do as I ask and not bring your sword into the company of a dark sorceress.” His voice was calm, and there was little fear in his expression. The bastard knew I wouldn’t kill him. That I couldn’t—not in such a cold-blooded manner, anyway.
“Then you don’t know me as well as you thought.” I pressed Amaya’s p ~>wejund theroint to the bridge of his nose. A thin stream of blood trickled from the wound. “I may be many things, Lucian, but I’m not stupid. That’s what meeting Lauren without some form of personal protection would have been.”
“I would have protected you.”
I resisted the urge to let Amaya bite just a little bit deeper. “I think your actions just now show where your true allegiance lies, and it’s certainly not with me. Or even, I’d hazard a guess, with Lauren.”
“You’ve known for some time just how deep the well is when it comes to revenge.” He reached out, but I snapped my head back and his caress hit my arm rather than my cheek. He let his hand drop again, but there was a brief flash of annoyance in his eyes. “I am sorry for the anger. I didn’t mean to harm or frighten you.”
He’d done both. But, more important, he’d shattered the trust I’d had in him.
His reaction had been deep and unthinking. He hadn’t seen me as a lover, or even as a person. I was just some thing that had sidetracked a means of gaining what he wanted.
And he’d hated me for that.
Hated me enough to want to kill me. He might not have meant to, but that would have been the end result if Azriel hadn’t turned up.
Of course, I had no doubt he would have regretted the momentary lapse of sanity, given that both he and everyone else needed me alive to find the damn keys. But regret after the fact wouldn’t have done me a whole lot of good.
“You and I are finished, Lucian.” I stepped back and sheathed Amaya. Her grumbles filled the back of my thoughts, and though the noise had dropped from banshee territory, it was still sharp enough to bring on yet another headache. “I can’t be with someone I can’t trust.”
“Risa, don’t be stupid. I apologized and I meant—”
“It’s not what you meant,” I interrupted testily. “It’s what you did that matters. Damn it, Lucian, I saw the hate.”
“What you saw was not aimed at you.” Perhaps he saw my disbelief, because he added, a little more sarcastically, “There is only one person I actually hate in this room, and he can lower his sword. I really do not intend you harm.”
“I could lower it, true,” Azriel said. “But Valdis rather likes the taste of your flesh.”
“We both know she will bite no further, as her master has no desire to flaunt reaper rules and thereby jeopardize becoming again what he once was.”
“I would not be so sure of that, Aedh.”
“So we’re all just going to stand here like this?” he asked, the sarcasm stronger this time. “That could get a little tedious, don’t you think?”
“What I think,” I said, taking another step away from him, though my retreat wasn’t just physical, “is that Azriel was right. You will lie, cheat, steal, and fuck to get what you want. Nothing and no one else matters—it’s all about you and your endgame. And whndgical, ile I might have been able to forgive the lying, I can’t forgive the attack. I don’t want that sort of violence in my life. Not now, not ever.”
“Risa—”
He reached for me again, but I slapped his hand away.
“No. I mean it, Lucian,” I said, anger and perhaps a touch of regret in my voice. Whatever else he was, he’d been a good lover, and I mourned the loss of that if nothing else. “You and I are finished.”
“As lovers, perhaps, but you will need another sword when it comes to finding the keys. Our last attempt proved that.”
“I would rather fight alone than fight with someone who plays this game for reasons he has not yet fully disclosed,” Azriel commented.
“I don’t believe I asked for your opinion, reaper,” Lucian snapped, then flexed his fingers and added, “I intend to remain part of this quest, Risa.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s an option no longer open to you.”
My voice was resolute, but deep inside, doubt stirred. There was a saying about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer. If Lucian was playing a deeper, darker game than mere revenge, it might be far better to
