He didn’t know how he would save the princess from the consequences of his failure, but he knew with absolute certainty that he couldn’t take Kora’s soul.
He also knew that the princess wouldn’t want to be safe at the expense of this woman.
“What will the Wish Granter do to you if you don’t complete my contract?” she asked.
He couldn’t answer.
“I signed the contract. I understood the cost.” She stepped closer, and he backed into the wall behind him. “This was my choice to do for my children.”
Maybe he could find someone else—someone who no longer deserved to live—and take their soul instead. Maybe Teague couldn’t tell the difference.
Even as he scrambled for other options, he knew the truth. The contract was in Kora’s name, sealed with her blood. The magic would only work on her.
Kora gently put a hand on his arm. “What is a nice young man like yourself doing working for the Wish Granter?”
He clenched his jaw to keep from yanking his arm away from her touch and said quietly, “It was the only way I could help someone very close to me.”
“I wish you could spare me,” she said, tears spilling over again. “I wish I could let you. But you don’t deserve to be punished for my sake. And neither do my children.”
He frowned at her.
She tapped the contract he held. “I read the terms and conditions before signing. He said most don’t, but I wanted to know exactly what I was getting into. It said if I tried to break my contract early, my soul would be due immediately. It also said that if at the end of ten years I failed to pay my debt for any reason, my daughters would pay instead.”
Sebastian closed his eyes and fought to breathe past the noose of panic that wanted to suffocate him.
“I never dreamed there was a way to avoid paying, so I never thought my girls would be in danger.” Her hand gripped his arm with fierce strength. “I have to pay this. I signed it. Not my girls. Not you. I’m ready.”
He wasn’t. He never would be.
But they were trapped by the terms of the contract. By the magic that wouldn’t let Sebastian bend the rules and take someone who deserved it more.
He wanted to push his horror and regret into a box and lock it away where he couldn’t be touched by it. He wanted the luxury of not caring when he looked into Kora’s calm, tearstained eyes.
It wouldn’t come.
Instead, his hands shook as he opened the vial. His voice caught on the words Teague had taught him to pronounce as he slowly whispered, “Ghlacadh anam de Kora Mitros agus mianach a dhéanamh.”
She stiffened, her mouth dropping open as if surprised. A brilliant light glowed beneath her skin, gathered in the center of her chest, and then slowly separated from her body. The life blinked out of her eyes, and her body hit the floor with a thud as the cloud of light hovered in the air above her for a moment, so achingly bright that Sebastian could hardly stand to look at it. He held up the vial, and the light streamed into it. When all of it was safely inside, Sebastian closed it and then sank to the floor beside Kora’s body, his shoulders shaking.
There were no words for the way everything inside him churned and tumbled. The way he wanted to open his mouth wide and scream his horror, but couldn’t unlock his jaw enough to make a single sound. There was nothing but a terrible, racking pain that scoured him from the inside out until he thought he’d promise anything just to make it stop.
The blood on his hands from the beatings he’d given in east Kosim Thalas was a tiny drop of water compared to the ocean of guilt he was drowning in now.
He needed to run, but there was nowhere to go that wouldn’t cost the princess her life.
He needed to escape, but there was no escape from the storm raging beneath his skin.
He needed a way out.
He needed help.
He needed Ari.
He straightened Kora’s body, closing her eyelids and folding her hands across her chest, and then he climbed to his feet, wrenched open the door, and began running toward the villa.
FORTY-FOUR
ARI STRETCHED, SLOWLY working each muscle from her neck to her toes. She’d been sitting with nothing but the thin mattress between her and the stone floor of the cage since the previous night, and it was now midafternoon. She was stiff, she was sore, and if she didn’t get a chance to relieve herself soon, she was going to embarrass herself in front of Jacob Vaughn.
“I need to use the bathroom.” She spoke into the silence that had stretched between them for hours. He’d tried to goad her into speaking a few times, but when she’d silently stared at her lap as if too depressed to talk—as if she wasn’t sitting there planning how to hurt him and get away—he’d given up.
Now, he barked out a laugh. “I don’t care what you need. Piss on yourself and sit in it.”
She was dangerously close to having to do exactly that.
“I’m also hungry,” she said, as if he’d already offered to meet her needs.
His lip curled. “So starve.”
She lifted her eyes to his and gave him her best impersonation of Mama Eleni’s you-are-unworthy-of-this-pie look, even though the thought of Mama Eleni and how frantic she must be to find Cleo sent a bright shaft of pain through Ari.
Fury followed hard on the heels of that pain. Jacob had Cleo’s blood on his hands, just like Teague. Jacob had whipped her until she couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but lie there and bleed until Teague snapped her neck.
Ari wasn’t going to cower in front of the man who’d helped kill Cleo.
“You don’t fool me,” she said with quiet intensity. “You don’t have the power to decide if I starve. You don’t have the power to decide anything at all. You’re nothing but a babysitter for Teague. Less than one of the villa guards. Less than even a street runner.”
His expression flattened, and he slowly climbed to his feet.
A tremble shook Ari as he stalked toward her.
She was hitting a venomous snake with a stick. She just had to pray she could talk fast enough to turn his venom toward Teague instead of her.
“Think you’re pretty special, don’t you?” His voice was rough.
“What I think doesn’t matter.” She kept her voice steady, but it was hard. He was closing fast, and the eager cruelty in his eyes made her want to shrink against the wall behind her.
“No, it doesn’t.” He was at her side in two more steps, and then he struck her face with the flat of his palm, sending her reeling.
Before she could recover, he grabbed her arms and gave her a quick, vicious shake. “You’re my prisoner. I can do whatever I want to you as long as I leave you alive.”
“I’m not your prisoner. I’m Teague’s.”
He grabbed her throat, dug his fingernails into her tender skin, and pulled her close enough that she could smell the staleness of his breath and feel the scratchiness of the rough tunic he wore.
There was nothing in his eyes but hatred. Nothing in his expression but rage.