Page 151 of Wings of Lies
“Not hard to despise someone like her,” Oliver muttered, bringing me out of my head.
Aspen clenched and unclenched his jaw. The queen’s disgusting Hell Rune swirled with black light, coercing his loyalty and infiltrating his mind.
Even if there was a slight chance Aspen wasn’t lying about what he thought of me, he deserved to be free of his queen. His mom asked me to save him. I don’t know how it worked or how she knew I’d endup in the dream-walk, but she knew enough to tell me. She anticipated the consequences before Marcus took her son, and she acted in his best interests.
I turned from Aspen and faced Magda, not ready but as ready as I would ever be.
“What else do you have for me, darling?” Magda twirled a lock of her golden hair.
Was it shinier than normal?
A jangling hand latched onto my shoulder. “One last question.”
I jerked around. “I have more than one.”
Aspen shrugged. “Should’ve asked the important ones first. That’s not my problem.”
“Go to hell,” I whispered forcefully, holding back tears at his indifference, wishing for his dimples and soft touches. “I’ve come this far, and I’m not leaving without knowing everything about my mother and the king in my head.”
His hand dug into my shoulder. “What king in your head?”
“Ask me, Lucille,” Magda said with a smile in her voice.
Aspen shot a glance at Magda before landing back on me. “One,” he repeated. By his tone and the way his fingers threatened to tear apart my chair, he meant it. Kicking or screaming, he would make me leave.Good thing we cuffed him.
“Did my mother poison me to protect me?” I asked, hating the wobble in my voice and the way my lungs seized.
Magda’s blue pendant changed to blood red, and the glee I witnessed on her face—like she somehow won the biggest prize—unsettled me.
“I’ll tell you that interesting tidbit if you tell me what you are.”
Why did she want to know that?
“I believe I’m a born angel, the first of my kind,” I said. Oliver’s eyes grew.
Aspen scoffed. “No, you’re not.”
“I am,” I insisted.
Magda tilted her head, rubbing her pendant. “Yes, I sense you believe that, but that’s not all you are.”
“What else am I?”
She licked her lips. “Isn’t that the question of the hour? But to answer your previous question, yes. She thought it was the only way.” Magda crossed her ankles, smiling with shimmering hair.
Relief settled the queasiness in my stomach. There was a reason my mom did it. It wasn’t malicious, so she probably wasn’t working for Marcus, but why was he there, and where were they now?
“Do not ask anything else unless you want to be strangled,” Aspen snapped, digging his tingly fingers underneath my arm, trying to force me to stand.
I wrenched at my arm, but his fingers only gripped harder. So, I grabbed onto the heavy wooden chair. It didn’t stop him, but it made dragging me a little more difficult for him.
“Sweetheart, let go!”
I froze, twisting around to look at his chin, giving him the time to slide his arms over my head and haul me out of the chair and back against his chest. The rune remained black.
He tricked me.
Aspen gripped my chin, smirking as he pulled us to the door. “The only person who gets to maim you is my queen. So, keep your mouth shut.”
