Az looks startled, but then the tears fall from my eye, and he wipes them away.
“Oh, Asha. It’s okay. You’re safe now. I’m going to fix things. I’m going to fix everything.”
It seems he truly believes it.
It seems I’ll have to make him think I believe it, too.
“I want you to know I’ve thought this through,” Az says, caressing my fingers though my wrists are bound in front of me.
My back aches from the constant bumping of the wagon, but Az has reassured me it won’t be much longer. That we are getting close.
“I want you to believe in me again, Asha. I’ve been thinking about you so much over the past year. Every stupid decision I made that cost me your trust. I was foolish, sick on a craving for power, and it blinded me to what I really needed. The only thing that’s ever made me feel whole. I need you, Asha. I’m empty without you.”
I force water to my eye as I watch him. It isn’t all that difficult, given I have a tendency to cry when I’m enraged.
“You see, there was more to my plan than I told you last time we saw each other.”
He means when he betrayed my entire family and also his lover for good measure. It’s probably for the best he has me gagged, because I’m not sure I could keep from tearing into him otherwise.
“I’ve been doing my research on the Rip for the past couple of years. On what sort of creatures stalk the other side of it. They’re massive, Asha. So much so, they almost hunted the fae to extinction.”
I want to say that given such knowledge, he might want to put some thought into what such creatures might do to humans, but alas, I cannot.
“If we could have those creatures under our control, if we could raise an army of them, we could bring the fae to their knees. Their rule would be just a blip in our history. The dark ages tutors will teach future generations because they won’t have to live it. We could win our world back, Asha.”
Or hand this world over to a bloodthirsty race of beasts, a familiar voice says inside of me.
Oh, how glad I am to hear that voice.
My, my, perhaps I should be drugged by vampire venom more often.
We’ll have to add it to our daily diet.
“I know you’re thinking I’m crazy, out of my mind, but I found a way to control them, Asha. And really, it’s so simple. I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out.”
Any chance he’s going to get on with it and tell us what it is?
Doubtful. I don’t think he trusts me that much.
Indeed, Az strokes my cheek affectionately before saying, “I can’t wait for you to see it. I’m hoping the effects of my brother’s magic wear off before then.”
Well, at least he’s still calling Kiran his brother, says my magic.
I figure if that’s what we’re feeling thankful for, we’re in a pretty rough place, indeed.
“I’m sorry about biting you,” Blaise says, her voice quiet as she speaks from the shadows.
I figured she was in here somewhere. Nothing else explains a wagon with zero sun access, but I haven’t been keen on trying to communicate with her.
I’d promised myself and Kiran that I wouldn’t allow myself to be manipulated again.
I tried my best with Blaise, tried to be her friend while still maintaining a healthy skepticism of her.
But she misled me, practically molding me like clay in her hands.
“I’m sorry about all of this, really,” she continues. “Here.” Something rustles, and I realize Blaise is coming closer. I stiffen as soon as she touches me. A pair of fangs flash before my mind.
She pauses for a moment, as if reconsidering, but then she hauls me upward in a fluid motion until I’m sitting up, leaning against the back frame of the wagon. “I’ll adjust you every few hours so you don’t have to worry about getting sores. And when it’s dark out, I can take you to relieve yourself.”
I just stare at her, my mouth open anyway because of the gag, but it would have been agape regardless.
She watches me for a moment, having the gall to look sorrowful, then slumps backward against the wall. The black box hooked to her belt clatters against the floorboards.
“Nox wasn’t being punished by the queen. Well, he was, in a way, but that wasn’t the entire story.”
She goes on to explain a tale that somehow ends with Nox and Farin, once sharing a body, now banished to another realm.
Apparently that very body, as well as his sister’s, joins us in the back of this dark wagon.
“Az promised to help. Once the Rip is opened, it will create enough power to separate Farin from Nox’s body. I just want him back. He’s all I have left. I’m sorry.”
All she has left because the sniveling scoundrel has betrayed everyone else who might have taken pity on her, my magic hisses.
“For what it’s worth, I won’t let him hurt you,” she says.
She must catch the sneer on my face, because she sighs. “I know. Not saying much coming from me. I really do like you. I’m not saying that because I want you to feel bad for me. Fates know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I just…I don’t know what I need. I guess I just wish things had turned out differently. That you and I could have been friends.”
I don’t need to be gagged to communicate that I don’t really care what Blaise would have preferred from her life.
