Page 255 of Lady of Ashes

“Because I allowed you in,” he replied coolly, his smile slipping a little.

“Then I suppose you have allowed everything that is about to happen.”

The two stared at each other. Master and student.

Maraan and Avonleyan. Torturer and tortured.

“You have seen what I can do, Scarlett,” he ?nally said, his voice low and lethal. “Do not think I will hesitate for one second to make you suffer. To take everything from you until you remember that Iown you.”

She let her glass plunk onto the alcohol cart before she began strolling for the door. “You have already taken everything from me, Alaric. There is nothing left for you to own. But you?” She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. She took in his stiffened posture. The way his eyes had narrowed slightly on her. “It appears you have everything to lose.”

“Do not step one foot out that door, Scarlett Monrhoe,” he hissed, rising smoothly to his feet.

“Aditya,” she sneered. “My name is Queen Scarlett Aditya. And I take orders from no one.”

She pulled the door shut behind her as she walked through the dungeon halls of the Fellowship for the ?nal time. She dragged her ?ngers along the cool stone walls while ?ipping the dagger she’d taken from his study.

A nightstone dagger.

As she approached the stairs leading up to his private wing, the guards at the bottom lurched into action.

But she had already struck, their blood freezing instantly in their veins. She knew Alaric was letting her walk away. She knew his arrogance would keep him from chasing after her, forcing her to stay. He thought he would eventually win this game.

He was wrong.

He had taught her much of what she knew. He had created Death’s Maiden.

But he had not created a Lady of Darkness.

With a smile lifting the corners of her mouth, she turned down the hall to his private quarters. Rooms she had only entered one other time. With a twitch of her ?ngers, white ?ames blasted the doors open. It was the only room she hadn’t been to yet, having wandered all the other halls before she’d made her way to the dungeon study to wait for him.

She’d kept herself hidden from his wards until then. The Sorceress’s book had all sorts of interesting Marks hidden within its pages. The cost? Being hidden to her Guardian as well within the wards. Cassius was waiting for her outside the Fellowship grounds. She’d refused to let anyone else come with her. No one else knew the streets of the Black Syndicate as well as they did. No one else would know what to watch for.

Who to watch for.

Scarlett walked past Alaric’s giant four-poster bed, dragging thenightstone dagger along the mattress, before sending another blast of ?ames at the balcony doors.

She was leaning against the railing when Alaric ?nally tracked her down.

“You claim you want to leave, yet you keep waiting for me,” he said smugly, his hands in pockets once more as he leaned against the doorjamb.

“I just really want to see your face when you realize just how far underneath your skin I am,” she answered, her shadows beginning to converge behind her, twisting and writhing.

His mask of casual indifference faltered at her words. “What are you talking about?”

“It is rather poetic, isn’t it?” she replied, climbing up onto the balcony railing, balancing precariously. “I wished for death that day, you know. That day. The days after. Even now at times. Feeling him ripped away from me. Just feeling …”

Him ?ghting his way to her. Him swearing there would be no more goodbyes. A bolt of energy—

Alaric lurched forward, his voice cutting through her downward spiral. “Get down from there, Scarlett. Now.”

“I would start checking all those cracks,” she replied. Flinging her arms out to the side, she free fell backwards.

“No!”

She heard Alaric’s cry of panic as she hit the back of her shadow dragon. She sat up, turning to look down at Alaric’s enraged face as her dragon ?apped its wings, keeping her airborne.

Then she let out all that fury and grief and brokenness andpowershe’d been storing up for three entire weeks.

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