Page 107 of A Light So Blinding
“The king himself. He said he never should have made you a priestess. That you weren’t worthy of the title because you were always too powerful and that power was going to go to your head.” Tolly took a menacing step toward her. “But he also said that you couldn’t change anything about how I feel. Only amplify it. So tell me now, Priestess. Now that he prepared me for what you would want when you returned, can you change my mind now?”
This man. How had she ever stayed as long as she had?
She’d never seriously thought about killing anyone in her entire life, but now that she’d been around Bjorn this long, the thought of it really didn’t bother her that much. A man like this deserved to die. He deserved what she was going to give him in just a few moments.
“Tolly,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have to reach into your mind to change it. You aren’t a killer. You have never been a killer.”
“How would you know that? You don’t know me.”
“But I do.” She took a step toward him, challenging the mere thought that he could follow through with this. “And I have been around killers now. You left me in that labyrinth. You locked me up inside it and you made it very clear that nothing you did would change the debt. You were willing to use my body, my life, to pay for your own mistakes. Do you know what that did to me?”
She lunged for the letter opener, grabbing his wrist and trying to twist it out of his hand. But he was bigger than her. Maybe there was some part of him that wanted to kill her.
With a quick jerk of his arm, he tossed her across the room. She hit a bookshelf hard, heavy tomes raining down on her head as she tried to cover herself from their strikes. And then he was on her.
Tolly grabbed her forearms, wrenching her away from the precariously tilting shelves. He gripped her so hard she was certain there would be bruises. The metal of the letter opener crushed against her skin, threatening to break through it before he even stabbed her.
“Why would you do this to me?” he hissed, shaking her so hard her teeth rattled. “Why did you ever believe that you could control me?”
He needed to be controlled. Because he was like this if she didn’t. Paranoid. Filled with fear for himself and his own life when he should have been focusing on ruling his people and those who looked up to him. Instead, he hid in the city, ignoring that there were tenants who paid him taxes, all to fuel his ridiculous lifestyle while he ignored their well-being.
He shook her again, even harder this time. “I’m going to get rid of you once and for all,” he snarled.
The door flew open to the library, and so many things happened all at once. Both she and Tolly looked over to thedoor to see his new priestess standing there. Her dark hair hung in clumps over her eyes, and then suddenly the letter opener twisted in his hands, plunging into his chest right through his heart. Blood didn’t spray as Astrid thought it might, but it did leak out over her hands in bubbling spurts as his heart tried to continue pounding around the foreign object.
Astrid opened her mouth, a little shocked at what had unfolded. She hadn’t done that. She was certain she had not done that.
“You...” He coughed and blood bubbled up through his mouth. “You made her do that.”
The new priestess strode into the room and grabbed his hands. “Let her go.”
“You didn’t... You didn’t want to,” he said to her as his hands released Astrid’s arms and he fell onto the ground. “It’s not your fault.”
The woman spat on him. “Priestesses always choose each other. You laid a hand on one of our own. You gave her to the labyrinth where you knew she would be attacked, raped, and killed. You deserve every bit of this. Whose power is weak now, little man?”
The life drained from his eyes, and Astrid was faced with a rather complicated dilemma. She was supposed to get Tolly to help them, and now he was dead at her feet. Not that she cared all that much. He’d been trying to kill her.
She waited until the other priestess met her gaze and then said, “Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome. I didn’t want to serve him, anyway.”
“I did need him, though.”
“For what?” the other priestess tilted her head to the side, ravenlike in her mannerisms.
“I need to get into the labyrinth. I intend to reveal it to the entire kingdom, and show the ugly underbelly of what the king is doing to all the people.”
“That doesn’t help any of our sisters if you do that.”
“Doesn’t it? They will no longer be at risk of the same punishment that I suffered,” she said. “I wasn’t the first one sent there. My sister was as well. The king punished her for not allowing a neighboring lord to touch her when she hadn’t even been given to him yet. No one should be able to touch a priestess unless she is bound to serve her lord.”
No, that wasn’t right. Those were the old words, the ones she had been taught but never believed. Astrid squared her shoulders and looked the other woman in the eye. “No one should be able to touch a priestess without her permission. Ever.”
Again the head tilt, as though the other woman was eyeing her. “I agree.”
“But I needed Tolly to get into the labyrinth.”
“I think the right bribe would do it too. All we need is one guard at the gate. You tell him exactly what is going to happen, and then give him... Oh, ten times his salary should do it. Tolly has that in his safe. Tell him if he helps us, then the trolls will allow him to get out of there. He can leave town and never look back.”
