My stomach tightened into a painful ball.
“I don’t need to invade your thoughts to know these things. I already know what you’ve slowly been realizing.” He again crouched in front of me. “You’re dying.”
My eyes stung, and I sucked my lips into my mouth.
“How much are you willing to risk on the hope that another form of help will come?”
I stared at him, sending as much hate as I could into my gaze. He’d been the one who’d caused all this. He’d told Amarantha about Clare; he’d made Tamlin beg.
“Well?”
I bared my teeth. “Go. To. Hell.”
Swift as lightning, he lashed out, grabbing the shard of bone in my arm and twisting. A scream shattered out of me, ravaging my aching throat. The world flashed black and white and red. I thrashed and writhed, but he kept his grip, twisting the bone a final time before releasing my arm.
Panting, half sobbing as the pain reverberated through my body, I found him smirking at me again. I spat in his face.
He only laughed as he stood, wiping his cheek with the dark sleeve of his tunic.
“This is the last time I’ll extend my assistance,” he said, pausing by the cell door. “Once I leave this cell, my offer is dead.” I spat again, and he shook his head. “I bet you’ll be spitting on Death’s face when she comes to claim you, too.”
He began to ripple with darkness, his edges blurring into endless night.
He could be bluffing, trying to trick me into accepting his offer. Or he might be right—I might be dying. My life depended on it. More than my life depended on my choice. And if Lucien was indeed unable to come … or if he came too late …
I was dying. I’d known it for some time now. And Lucien had underestimated my abilities in the past—had never quite grasped my limitations as a human. He’d sent me to hunt the Suriel with a few knives and a bow. He’d even admitted to hesitating that day, when I had screamed for help. And he might not even know how bad off I was. Might not understand the gravity of an infection like this. He might come a day, an hour, a minute too late.
Rhysand’s moon-white skin began to darken into nothing but shadow.
“Wait.”
The darkness consuming him paused. For Tamlin … for Tamlin, I would sell my soul; I would give up everything I had for him to be free.
“Wait,” I repeated.
The darkness vanished, leaving Rhysand in his solid form as he grinned. “Yes?”
I raised my chin as high as I could manage. “Just two weeks?”
“Just two weeks,” he purred, and knelt before me. “Two teensy, tiny weeks with me every month is all I ask.”
“Why? And what are to … to be the terms?” I said, fighting past the dizziness.
“Ah,” he said, adjusting the lapel of his obsidian tunic. “If I told you those things, there’d be no fun in it, would there?”
I looked at my ruined arm. Lucien might never come, might decide I wasn’t worth risking his life any further, not now that he’d been punished for it. And if Amarantha’s healers cut off my arm …
Nesta would have done the same for me, for Elain. And Tamlin had done so much for me, for my family; even if he had lied about the Treaty, about sparing me from its terms, he’d still saved my life that day against the naga, and saved it again by sending me away from the manor.
I couldn’t think entirely of the enormity of what I was about to give—or else I might refuse again. I met Rhysand’s gaze. “Five days.”
“You’re going to bargain?” Rhysand laughed under his breath. “Ten days.”
I held his stare with all my strength. “A week.”
Rhysand was silent for a long moment, his eyes traveling across my body and my face before he murmured: “A week it is.”
“Then it’s a deal,” I said. A metallic taste filled my mouth as magic stirred between us.
His smile became a bit wild, and before I could brace myself, he grabbed my arm. There was a blinding, quick pain, and my scream sounded in my ears as bone and flesh were shattered, blood rushed out of me, and then—
Rhysand was still grinning when I opened my eyes. I hadn’t any idea how long I’d been unconscious, but my fever was gone, and my head was clear as I sat up. In fact, the mud was gone, too; I felt as if I’d just bathed.
But then I lifted my left arm.
“What have you done to me?”
Rhysand stood, running a hand through his short, dark hair. “It’s custom in my court for bargains to be permanently marked upon flesh.”
I rubbed my left forearm and hand, the entirety of which was now covered in swirls and whorls of black ink. Even my fingers weren’t spared, and a large eye was tattooed in the center of my palm. It was feline, and its slitted pupil stared right back at me.
“Make it go away,” I said, and he laughed.
“You humans are truly grateful creatures, aren’t you?”
From a distance, the tattoo looked like an elbow-length lace glove, but when I held it close to my face, I could detect the intricate depictions of flowers and curves that flowed throughout to make up a larger pattern. Permanent. Forever.
“You didn’t tell me this would happen.”
