My scowl deepened at the intense look he was giving me.
“He’s coming,” I spat, feigned confidence spilling over my lips as I flattened them into a tight line.
The anger in his eyes intensified as he took a step closer to me, his fingers flexing by his side. “You would do well to make sure that is not a lie, Ovailia,” he warned, the sound of his steps loud as they slapped against the wet cobbles.
He moved around me as I stood in place, my head held high while I waited for whatever was coming.
“Find him for me,” Edmund hissed in my ear as he moved a step closer. A shiver moved down my spine at the icy chill of his hand moving over my neck as he swept my hair away from my face. His scowl deepened as I peered at him from out of the corner of my eye. “I want to know definitively.”
You are trying my patience, I sent to Sain through the shard of blade that was embedded in his spine. The piece matched with the one my father had spread throughout me, the one-way communicator bubbling painfully through my blood.
I turned toward my father with a flick of my hair, my eyes meeting his dead-on, and I smiled. His own malice matched my own as I saw the pride in him grow.
“Do not worry, Father,” I cooed, an uncomfortably hot breeze moving through my hair, reacting with the residual chill of my father’s touch like ice on a sidewalk. “He is coming. You will get what you need.”
“Wonderful. See that that it happens.” His lips twitched into what I hoped was a smile before he moved away from me, back into the shadowed overhang of the flower shop.
The little girl who had gone back to her inspection of the dead and blood-soaked flowers snapped back into obedient attention.
“I would hate to discover this little game he is playing is stretching to you, as well. We still need him, Ovailia. I would hate to make you prove your loyalty to me again.”
Ice trailed down my spine at the warning. The hatred in his words moved through me so deeply I shivered, which caused his smile to expand.
“That won’t be necessary,” I cooed, keeping my voice gentle as I tried to pull his focus from my fear. He would have none of that, though; he simply smiled more. “I am yours, Father.”
“Good, because he may be my key to procuring Wynifred as my mate.” The greasy grin on his face spread wider. “And once that is done, we can attack Ilyan and his pathetic pack mules. Then we can end this.”
My smile broadened with eager anticipation as he turned back toward the girl. The way he was looking at her and the way her eyes glossed over made it obvious he was taking control through the ?tít he had placed in her heart.
Looking away, I walked back toward the end of the alley, avoiding a puddle of what looked like fresh blood that had pooled in the middle of the cobbled street.
Everything here was too red, too wet, and too dirty. Add to that the decay of a city left to rot, and I wasn’t about to touch anything. It was bad enough I had to smell it. I would have preferred the vile death of the camp outside the wall to this, and that was something I had never thought I would admit.
“Ovailia,” my father called loudly from behind me, his voice carrying enough to awaken one of the many Vil?s who lay hidden in the space. I heard the hiss and turned, ready to say the word, but with one look, the mutated thing retreated, its tail between its legs.
“Why wait?” I asked, the creature’s fear igniting my desperate need to cause more pain.
“Soon, my precious girl.” His voice was a smooth whisper as he moved toward me in three quick steps, his finger resting against the side of my face with a touch so gentle I forgot who he was. “Soon, the war will come, our thousands will crush Ilyan’s handfuls of rejects, and then all of this will be ours again. The magic will be mine again, and no one will be able to stop me.”
“No one deserves that more than you. You are my king.”
“Good.”
The same foreign and unwanted fear ticked back into place as he moved away. My nose wrinkled in disgust, although I was convinced part of that was from the smell.
“Father—” I began then stopped short at the sound of a crash that moved through the city.
A loud bang and a flash emanated from the old, broken cathedral that lay a few streets away, the already debilitated city shaking with groans and bangs, a mist of dust moving over us like a fog.
I cringed against it, moving before my father with hands outstretched as if some unseen assailant was hurling toward him.
No one was there, but it didn’t matter; I stayed in front of him, the girl right by my side as my father’s guard appeared before us, their bodies popping into existence as they ran into the alley and descended from the rooftops, surrounding the three of us in a wide human shield.