Page 53 of Married By Treachery

The one she needed to kill.

And he was smiling cruelly. “Well, well, well, I do believe you’ve rendered my traitorous little brother speechless.”

17

“Edom,” Jake said. There was nothing kind in Jake’s voice. He slid Raquel from the desk, set her back upon the floor, and took three steps toward Prince Edom, only to find himself blocked by the points of half a dozen swords.

And Jake smiled viciously. “Good evening, gentlemen. Still defending my dear brother’s insecurities, I see.”

Edom took a step, then another, each footfall landing like a brick upon the mosaic tiles. “And you are still slinking in the shadows like the traitorous little worm you are. Did you really think you would get away with this?”

“Where is she, Edom?” Jake’s voice was dark, his expression murderous.

“Somewhere she can no longer interfere.” Edom reached up and plucked a blood-red rose from the vine. “I’ll be honest. I could not believe that my own mother would favor one sonso muchthat she would act against the other. Not until I saw the rose upon that stag. Then I knew.” Those last words ground out between his teeth, and he crushed the little bloom in his fist and watched those petals fall as they disintegrated into ash.

“If you so much as laid a finger on her, so help me—” Jake pitched forward, but those sword points remained resolute.

Edom moved between his men and their swords and stopped before Jake. “You’llwhat? There is nothing you can do. I have three elite and fifty men standing outside. I expected you would hear our approach, but it makes sense now. You were”—his gaze slid to Raquel—“otherwise engaged. Tell me, when, exactly, were you planning to kill her? While making love to her, or after?” Edom must have seen something in Raquel’s face, because his eyes suddenly glittered with cruel delight, and he added, “He didn’t tell you?”

Raquel looked at Jake, and her heart pounded. “Is this true?”

Jake did not answer, and he did not meet her gaze.

Edom, however, looked positively ecstatic. “Why, yes. He needs your blood. From your heart.”

But Jake still wasn’t looking at her—would notlook at her. His attention fixed only on Edom, and her legs began to tremble in fear. In deep disappointment. “Answer me, Jake…is this true?” Raquel demanded.

It was then that Jake’s gaze slid to hers, but it was not her Jake that looked at her now. Not the man from her dreams or the one she’d come to know. This Jake’s smile was mirthless, and his eyes shone with cruelty as his lips curled in mockery of her misplaced hope. “As true as your mortality.”

His words were a boulder to her chest. “You said you had to claim my heart…that was your riddle. So you lied—”

“You told her the riddle?” Edom looked to Jake, surprised.

“I did,” Jake drawled. “Just not all of it.”

A beat.

“‘Through blood, by blood, may your sins be paid, spent from a mortal heart, the heir must claim,’” Jake said.

His words were a knife through Raquel’s chest. He was right; he hadn’t lied—not exactly. He’d simply left out the first line, but it was the most important line of all, for by it, the rest hinged.

Starting with blood from her mortal heart.

“So this was all just a game to you.” Raquel’s voice trembled. Her entire body trembled. “You reallyarea heartless, selfish…” There were so many names she wanted to call him, but her breaking heart bled all over her words. “It was all a lie.”

“I never lied, my bride,” Jake answered simply. “You just refused to believe me.”

“Oh, no…let it be known that Jakobiánisa liar. He speaks in lies. He is such a master of twisting truth that not even our curse can prevent his lies completely. He always…finds an edge.” Edom tilted his head, and his gaze razed over Raquel in a way that Raquel found extremely impolite. “I see why you fought so hard for this one. She is an unusually pretty little mortal, isn’t she?”

“And her heart is claimed, so what now, brother?” Jake taunted.

Edom took a small step closer to Jake. “Claimed? I think not. It is broken. And besides. The dead cannot claim anything.” And Edom slung his fist at Jake’s face.

Raquel gasped, and her hands flew to her mouth as the force of Edom’s strike sent Jake reeling. Blood trickled from Jake’s nose, and the skin around his eye bloomed an angry red, but he was…smiling.

“Seems I struck a nerve.” Jake wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

“Kill him,” Edom said darkly.

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