Page 47 of A Heart of Crimson Flames
I heard Navin’s light laugh from behind me as I stalked back toward the temple. “Do I even want to know what you have planned?”
I flashed him a catlike grin over my shoulder. “You really, really do...
“But there’s no way I’m going to tell you unless youmake me.”
Briar
FIRELIGHT FLICKERED IN MY BEDROOM WHEN I ENTERED, THEnights surprisingly chilly in the balmy tropical atmosphere. When the door fully opened, I screamed.
A body lay in a heap at the foot of my bed. Shining silver eyes stared lifelessly up at the ceiling. That perfectly carved cold face, the royal garb... Evres.
Maez appeared from the shadowed corner of my room. “Do you like my present?”
She asked it like a cat bringing me a dead mouse, so utterly pleased with herself.
I gaped at the body on my bed. “You killed him?”
“No,” she sang, and my eyes narrowed to the rise and fall of his chest. “He is under the very same sleeping curse that you were once subject to. Although I’d imagine you looked much more of a beauty,” she said, roughly grabbing Evres’s cheeks and shaking them back and forth. “And less of a dead fish.”
“What are you going to do with him?” I breathed, unable to hide the horror in my words.
“I’m not going to do anything with him,” Maez said, producing a dagger from her cloak and flipping it to offer me the hilt, just as she had the day she first rescued me. “You are.”
I took a step back, banging into the now-closed door that Maez must’ve magically shut.
“I can’t,” I said firmly, shaking my head.
“You said you wanted to prove you could handle this darkness, handleme.”
“I know, but—”
“Enough! I’m not talking to the Princess right now,” Maez cut in. “I’m talking toyou, Briar. I don’t care what you were taught to be. What is it youwantto do to him?”
Drawn in by the undertow of her empowering words, I found my true voice. Not the sweet affected one I’d been taught, the real one pulled up from below the surface. “I once vowed to myself that I’d be the one to kill him.”
“Good. He was going totortureyou,” Maez pushed, gesturing at Evres with the dagger. “He was going to breed you and break you in body and spirit until you were nothing but a shell of the vibrant person you once were.” Her voice was laced with a promise of violence. Static filled the air as if it angered her magic, too, as if every ounce of her being wanted to exact revenge. “He was going to do much worse than kill you swiftly. But these powerful men have never known a power like mine.” She took a step forward and placed the glinting black hilt of the dagger in my hand. “A power likeyours.”
I gripped the warmed hilt, taking a step forward even as I said one last time, “I can’t do this.”
“You can,” Maez urged, leaning into me until her mouth was only a hair’s breadth from my own. “You can be every forge and fire, Briar. You can be vengeance.”
When she stepped away again, I stared at Evres, knowing that if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t hesitate. His only sorrow from slicing a blade across my throat would be that he’d bleed me out in minutes instead of decades. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to take another step.
Anger mounted at my own inaction. How long would it take me to fully grant myself this permission? How long would I beuntangling my truth from the facade? Would I forever be leashed to the person I was told I should be?
“Is it because he is asleep?” Maez asked with a cock of her head. “Because if you could hear all the sick things twisting through his mind, you wouldn’t hesitate.” When I didn’t move, she sighed and snapped her fingers. “Fine.”
Evres shot up, gasping. His hand went to his throat, and he searched the room.
“Maez,” I warned as Evres started to realize what was happening. His cold eyes landed on me, a sneer on his lips as he said, “You.” He looked like he wanted to kill me, like he wanted to drag me back to Damrienn and strangle the life out of me.
I gripped the dagger tighter. “Maez,” I pleaded again.
“You can do this,” she said. “You are stronger than you know.”
“I...”
My whole life I’d done the right thing, done exactly as I was told, and look where it got me. Maybe it was time I stopped looking to others to save me. Maybe the right thing wasn’t patience and calm and kindness.The right thing. I was beginning to wonder if that concept was one of the many lies taught to women to keep us chained. My soul sang with the realization: maybe theright thingto do was bring this bastard to a violent and bloody end.
