Page 99 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
Those brown eyes were no longer soft. They were raging and had menacing flecks of green in them, like that blasted poison from the wedding had rotted his brain.
“What I had to,” he rumbled. He towered over me as the rest of the masked figures approached behind him. “You let that bastard threaten my wife at the wedding.”
The words stung, because they were true.
My mind flashed back to the wedding and The Dragon’s blade near her pregnant belly. I had stood there, sending secret messages, because I knew his wife was in no real danger–not from the prince, at least.
“The Dragon would have never harmed her,” I said sadly. “No Blood Brotherhood warrior worth their blade attacks the defenseless, it’s in their Clan Code. Your very pregnant wife was the safest out of us all.”
That information about the Blood Brotherhood had come from our best spy and hadn’t left the throne room. Orion couldn’t have known.
His face twitched with rage. “I don’t care about Clan Codes. I care about my family.”
The words felt hollow, no matter how hard he shouted them in my face.
“Did your wife die?”
“No.”
“Are your children safe?”
“Yes.”
I narrowed my eyes. Revenge, I could understand. Easier to blame me if one of those errant arrows had taken the love of his life than going after the real killers.
But this wasn’t about deranged feelings or righteousness.
“You’re telling me that incident at the wedding made you go against your Clan and your vows?” I said in a deadly whisper.
Orion clenched his mighty jaw. “Our magic got voided!”
“Orion, do not take me for a fool. You have the greatest fists in all of the Protectorate. You only bothered with your powers to make yourself glow and look fiercer in battle.”
A cold smirk twitched on his face. “I have power now.”
Right before my eyes, a blue tendril erupted from his huge hand, coiled around his wrist like a snake, and wrapped around my neck. But it was no longer the clear Protectorate blue. It flickered with the murky shade of a misty night and it smelled of something foul.
He had power, but it was spoiled. Tainted.
“Whatdid you do?” I asked, horrified.
To taint his powers meant he’d mangled his soul in ways no magic could ever unwrap.
“I have more power than you now.” His smirk grew, but it trembled at the edges, as if he couldn’t quite control his body.
The last thread of hope in his humanity deflated inside of me. “Greed? You betrayed countless generations forgreed?”
Shadows flickered in his gaze. “I don’t need to be judged by a Clan-less nobody. I did what I had to do.”
He nodded at the figures behind him. “Find the courier. We leave no witnesses behind.”
Fear gripped me. “No!”
The poor man and his horse were blameless. I’d used them to escape the crater and land myself in this trap.
One of the figures gave a curt nod and turned.
“No!” I began to flail in Orion’s grasp. His grip tightened. “Leave him alone, he’s innocent.”
