Page 124 of Vicious Is My Throne

“Now tell us what really happened.” Tavion leaned forward, elbows braced on a small reading table. “You and Cosimo went back in time to the night of the riot in Southwell? How is that even possible?”

“Coz invented a device, small enough to hang around your neck but imbued with enough magic to take us back in time. The Fae King had commissioned him to…” He scanned our faces. “Never mind, that’s not important. We went back to that night, yes. We found the pendant hidden in a pitcher of water.”

Some dark shadow passed over his face, and I wondered what the rest of the story was. But…

“We should find out if this thing even works.” I nudged the box to the center of the table. “Before we start making plans.”

Tristan checked the hall then closed the door before I lifted the pendant off my neck.

I laid the amulet beside the box and flipped open the lid, Tavion reeling back. “Godsdamned thing nearly killed me last time,” he muttered, face pale. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Only you can touch the blade, Anaria.” Bexley examined the weapon, from a safe distance, of course, hands clasped behind him. “I’ve been doing research. Something to do with possessing witch blood, I presume.”

I lifted the blade from the box to a chorus of quick, inhaled breaths, laying it beside the pendant, then fit the amulet into the end of the pommel.

Nothing happened. There were no grooves, no discernible means to attach the two together. No magic that miraculously joined the two pieces. Upon closer examination, the amulet didn’t even seem to be the right size.

“Could there be two of them?” Raz asked. “Do we have the wrong one?”

“No, this is the correct artifact,” Bexley said with not a shred of doubt. “In all the renderings I’ve ever seen, that amulet is an exact copy. I doubt there are two.” He caught my eye. “Witches didn’t make duplicates. They prided themselves on their originality, and being that it is part of a weapon meant to kill a god, Sylvi would have made only one due to the sheer amount of magic required to forge such a powerful relic.”

“This doesn’t have any magic left,” I told him, rubbing my finger over the stone, a beautiful, deep red but lacking the glowing inner light of our keystones.

“Let me see.” Tristan held up his hand, and before I thought about what a bad idea this was, I shucked the amulet across the room. He snatched it deftly from midair.

“Shite,” he swore, wiping his hand on his breeches. “The godsdamned thing cut me.” Blood coated his hand, soaking into the engraved setting as he held out the offending item.

The knife vibrated against the tabletop, dancing toward Tristan across the wooden surface, then the amulet flew across the room and, with a metallic click, attached itself to the end of the pommel, the stone glowing brightly enough to suffuse the entire room with a red glow.

“Well, that’s new,” Bexley murmured in a rare show of confusion, his eyes wide. “You never told us you had witch blood, DeVayne.”

Tristan looked like he was going to be sick. “I don’t. Not a fucking drop.”

“That knife would say otherwise.” Bex nodded to the united weapon, the stone glowing, the blade rattling softly against the wood. “Only witch blood could bind the two pieces together. That is the only logical explanation.”

The mage toyed with the ring on his finger. “Perhaps a distant relative, or a bastard in the family?” Tristan’s jaw flexed at the insult, but Bexley was too preoccupied to notice. “But no matter,” Bex said brightly. “The weapon is complete and can now be wielded.”

“There are no DeVayne bastards, and I despise those foul creatures.” Tristan’s face fell. “Present company excluded, of course. There isn’t a drop of witch blood in the DeVayne line, not a single fucking drop.”

“Hmmm. If you say so,” Bexley murmured, focused wholly on the weapon. “Try to lift it, Anaria.”

My fingers flexed.

I’d dreamed of having a weapon capable of killing Corvus for months now. My blood sang at the very idea of wielding such a thing. But everything cost me something dear.

Trapping the Oracle had unleashed Corvus.

Dropping that wall had cost us both Varitus and Caladrius.

Wielding this weapon…Would this knife be Corvus’s destruction? Or our own?

“They say magic has a cost, and I’ve never been afraid to pay that price,” I said quietly, everyone staring at the weapon with the same kind of dread. “But I never pay the price. You do. This world pays. Innocents pay. The price is never mine, it’s always someone else’s.” I stepped closer, letting my magic rally.

“That’s all I ask. If there is a price for using this, for stopping Corvus, let me be the only one to?—”

“No,” Tavion and Raziel shouted together.

“…suffer the cost,” I finished.

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