Floquart arched a thin brow. His eyes slitted like a cat’s. “Then this is my farewell.” He adjusted his cuff links. “I will be gone by first light, along with any hope you ever had of an alliance.” With the fierceness of a lion, he marched away, his coattails flapping.
Valko paced back and forth. He yanked his hair at the scalp as he watched the emissary go. I remembered the emperor’s finger on the map tracing the river of Shengli, his manic attention to detail in preparing to receive the Estens. I thought of the end of the border wars at the base of the Bayac Mountains. He’d given all of them up. I couldn’t understand why.
Apparently, neither could he.
Once Floquart was out of sight, Valko slammed his hand against the wall. It echoed oddly from within the closed room behind him. “Dammit, Sonya!”
I flinched. His aura shifted so quickly I could scarcely prepare myself.
“Do you see what you’ve done?” He hit the wall again. This time something sounded from the room with such distinctness it couldn’t possibly be an echo.
I stood erect, determined not to cower before him. “Nothing I said to the emissary was unwarranted.”
Valko laughed and rubbed his eyes with his palms. “The mere act of you speaking to him was offensive. Have you no idea of your station?”
His rebuke burned inside me like acid. I tensed my body to ward off shaking. “You chose me over Estengarde! This isn’t my fault.”
“No?” he shouted. “Am I to blame?” The door behind him opened a crack, though I couldn’t see within. The darkness, which had been my constant companion all evening, seemed to swirl out from the crack in thick waves. “You glide into my life with your intensity, with that wildness you keep restrained. Yet when I taste it, it is so intoxicating I don’t know whether to nip at you or devour you whole!”
My jaw muscle locked. He blamed his desire on my reckless passion? Did he remember the truth of me was so devastating it killed all but three people at the convent? “You would do well do keep your distance.”
His nostrils flared. He prowled around me like a panther. “You’re right. You’re a demon in a girl’s body! You’ve been sent here to destroy me, haven’t you?”
“You tell me.” By the gods, I couldn’t hold my savage tongue any more than he could. “From the looks of it, I seem to be succeeding.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me against the wall. My head followed like the lashing of a whip. Through my blackening vision, my gaze wavered to the slitted door. I could have called out for help, but a rush of boldness overtook me. I turned back to the emperor and gave him a vixen’s smile.
“It’s not too late to do away with you, you know?” Valko’s thumbs slid along my collarbone until they probed the base of my neck. He pinched my airway and sent blood throbbing through my head.
I drew in a ragged breath. Deep inside me someone screamed, someone pleaded for something I no longer had ears to hear. I cared more for the ultimate suffering the emperor tempted me with, my final amends to the Auraseers at the convent. To Yuliya. Perhaps death was what I had wanted all along. The necessary sacrifice for redemption. I set my jaw. “Do it, Valko. End my suffering.”
The door opened wider on silent hinges. Anton emerged on the threshold. The shadowy figures of other people in the room stood far behind him. In the prince’s hand was a dagger.
Valko still thought we were alone. With his back to his brother, his lips stretched over his teeth. His hands clawed up to my face. “You are mine!” He shook me. “No one commands you to leave me. Not Floquart. Most certainly not you.” In another abrupt mood change, he yanked me forward until my mouth crashed on his.
The darkness overtook me completely. Had it sourced from me all along? I kissed him back, fangs and forked tongue like the serpent I was. Nothing resembling love or tenderness emitted from either of us.
When Valko’s lips traveled to my neck, my gaze fell on Anton. I saw him dimly, like peering at someone past a sheet of rain. His aura couldn’t reach me, not in the state I was in, but his eyes held everything I couldn’t feel. Sorrow. Pain. Not the pain Valko infected me with—the pain I welcomed—but a lonely variety. A mourning pain, like I was lost, and there was nothing he could do to recover me.
Was I lost? Was I the mirror I’d pledged I wasn’t? Did I only reflect the madness of the world?
My hands trembled as I fought to raise them. I set them on Valko’s chest. I pushed him away. I wasn’t lost. “Stop.”
His eyes narrowed, his face flushed with passion. “You can’t have it both ways, Sonya. Not anymore. You can’t be the doe and the demon. I know you now.”