“Is that so?” Caius tightened his grip on his knives. His magic had been returning slowly, but he was nowhere near fully recovered.
“Indeed.” Tanith toed Oeric’s boot. His foot flopped limply to the ground. “I knew there were holes. Places where information leaked. Spots where it filtered in, like an annoying drip that won’t stop drip, drip, dripping. I tried to find out who our traitor was, but no one wanted to talk.” She gazed at the mess she had made in the hall, at the lives she had ended in a fit of pique. “And I tried so hard to be persuasive. Fortunately, I had help.”
She continued her approach and Caius stood his ground. The crowd behind Caius shifted in expectation. Anticipation clogged the air like a heady scent. When Tanith was about fifteen feet from him, she stopped, her brow furrowing. “It was a mistake to leave you there. To let you be found. Weak. Weak, weak, weak.”
She turned away, raking her hands through her unruly hair. “But I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Shouldn’t do it. But it must be done. My last distraction. The final thread. The anchor. Not right. Wrong, all wrong.”
“She’s not talking to us, is she?” Dorian wondered aloud.
Caius shook his head. “Tanith!” he called.
Her head snapped around and she blinked, as if she’d forgotten they were there. Her eyes narrowed.
“Come here, pet,” she said, snapping her fingers. A gold chain dangled from her other hand, a pendant swinging slightly with every movement she made. The kneeling figure, who had remained by the throne when Tanith had risen, stood and turned to face them.
Dorian let loose a string of curses in Drakhar, vicious enough to scald. Helios kept his eyes lowered, but there was no mistaking him. There he stood, in full Firedrake regalia. Those proud shoulders slumped in shame, and he refused to meet Caius’s gaze. In the rush to leave for the keep, Caius hadn’t given much thought to Helios’s absence. There had been other things to consider, far more important than the whereabouts of a single soldier. When had Helios departed? How had no one noticed?
The same way you didn’t, Caius’s mind supplied. You thought he was insignificant.
“Helios?” Ivy’s voice was so small, she doubted it carried far enough for him to hear her, but his head bowed, eyes closed, as if he had. “Tell me it’s not true.”
Helios opened his eyes and raised them to meet Ivy’s. The guilt in his expression was unmistakable. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged, as if he was too much of a coward to offer a response.
That unbelievable bastard.
“I trusted you,” Ivy spat.
A cruel laugh erupted from Tanith. “That was rather the whole point,” she said, her sharp voice slicing through the heavy pall of betrayal that had settled over Caius. “Do you think I was stupid enough to simply let you waltz out of my fortress with nary a scar to show for it? Did you honestly believe I was that startlingly incompetent?”
Tanith turned to Helios. A black-veined hand stroked his hair as if he were a well-behaved dog that had just performed an impressive trick. “You must have done an even better job than I anticipated. I had made it through only half the courtiers when he showed up, fresh from the little Icelandic hideout you thought I didn’t know about, and told me everything.” She held up the small pendant Dorian had sent Ivy into the keep with all those weeks before, one side mirrored and smeared with blood. “He even used this trinket that the little dove smuggled in to send you that message.” She cupped Helios’s cheek with one hand, her nails digging into his flesh. “Perhaps I was wrong to doubt you.”
“No,” said Helios, shaking his head. He shuddered at her touch, and even from a distance, Caius could see the resolve harden his yellow eyes. “You weren’t.”
Caius saw only the briefest flash of steel in the dim light before a knife plunged into the vulnerable sliver of exposed throat above the collar of Tanith’s armor. Helios held on to the blade even after it sank to the hilt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Tanith did not bleed.
Echo waited to see blood pooling around the wound, but none came.
Helios stared at the dagger as if it had betrayed him. He let go of it and stumbled back a step. Tanith wrapped her hand around the hilt and yanked the blade free, her breath gusting out in a relieved sigh, as if being stabbed were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
The wound gaped. Something thick and viscous oozed from it, but it was not blood. Rivulets of black sludge pulsed from the tear in her skin, behaving nothing like blood from a fresh wound.
“What the fuck?” Echo whispered softly but with great feeling.
Caius shifted beside her, gripping his knives even tighter, for all the good they would do him. “My thoughts exactly.”
Tanith flung the offending weapon away with a look of disdain etched upon her fine features. “Little fox,” she drawled, her blackened eyes seeking out Helios. “Has being my fox in the henhouse made you brave?”
Thick plumes of black smoke punched up from the ground around Helios, winding around his ankles and up his calves, holding him in place while Tanith advanced with measured steps. She flicked her hand, and the dark tendrils yanked him to his knees with a thud. Red-tipped fingers tapped his chin, angling his face up to meet Tanith’s piercing gaze. Her hand ghosted gently over Helios’s cheek before tangling in his hair and yanking his head back, baring the pale, vulnerable column of his throat.
“Betrayal. Betrayal everywhere I look.” Tanith’s eyes slid from Helios to Caius. “And this, too, will be washed away in blood and shadow. An end for a new beginning.”
With that, she pulled Helios to his feet. “Enough of you.” Her free hand balled into a fist and slammed into his breastplate, sending him flying into the far wall with a jangle of metal and the thick thud of flesh and bone against stone. He crumpled to the ground, limbs limp. Lifeless. Another broken doll in Tanith’s collection.
Wiping her hands on her soiled cloak, Tanith turned back to face the others. Her brow pinched in thought and her head tilted to the side, as if she were listening to a song only she could hear.
“Caius,” Echo whispered. “This isn’t good.”
He pushed her behind him, jaw clenched. “Stay back.”
Echo tried to protest, but Dorian obeyed his prince and maneuvered Echo and Ivy behind him, keeping his own body between them and the watching Drakharin. An Avicen and a human running amok was perhaps too much additional excitement for them. “No.” Dorian shook his head. “Not yet. Not unless he needs us.”
“Are you insane?” Echo said. Tanith was stronger than they’d anticipated. Stronger than Echo, even with the power of the firebird flowing in her veins. They couldn’t let Caius face her alone.
“He has to do this on his own,” Dorian hissed.