Page 112 of Close Quarter
Silas slid forward a step. Anaxandros tilted his head and fingered the hilt of the daemon sword he balanced on a spot just in front of Rhys's nose.
He twirled the blade on that point.
Silas froze.
"I once underestimated your intelligence,” Anaxandros said. "Do not disappoint me by playing the fool now."
"I have no desire to please you," Silas said while his mind spun around the soulless's words.
He was missing something. Diana help him, there was meaning in the vampire's words.
He didn't understand. He felt all the more helpless as he looked down at the crumpled form at Anaxandros's feet.
He'd give anything to save Rhys.
"Anything, Quintus?"
He hadn't realized he had spoken out loud.
Part of him was sure he hadn't, and he did not want to contemplate what that meant.
"Anything?" the soulless repeated. "Your life?"
This was not the game he intended to play, but he found that he could not keep silent. "Yes." His voice was a whisper.
"Your soul?"
For a moment, breath failed to fill his lungs.
Then he managed a mouthful. "Fae can't..." Or so he'd been told. Humans could relinquish their souls. Messengers could fall. But the fae were fae, always.
Anaxandros stood tall, inhuman, and looked like the most glorious day of summer. Silas had never thought--never seen that possibility before.
He took a step back and wielded words like a shield. "Fae can't give their souls."
The soulless chuckled. Then it spoke in a tongue none of its kind should know, a tongue older than humans. "Is that what they told you?"
He hadn't heard the fae language in so long. It was for the court, for family, and he had none of those things.
Horrible, horrible understanding blossomed like a bloodstain on cloth. The death of his court, those long years of torment and pain. Why the Messengers had chosen him. They had to have known, because theyalwaysknew.
Fae.Anaxandros had been fae.
It took all his strength not to drop the sword in his hand. Rhys's sword.
Rhys.
As if the soulless--this fae soulless--could read his thoughts, it lifted the point of its sword and stepped over Rhys. "The Messengers are fond of choices, aren't they?"
Silas backed into the wall of the planting beds behind him. He hadn't meant to move at all.
An instant later, Anaxandros pushed the sword away with the stump of his arm and laid the daemon blade on Silas's shoulder. The edge kissed the side of his neck.
"I'll give you a choice." Anaxandros spoke in fae, in the tones a brother might use. "Give your soul to me, and I'll spare his life."
The daemon blade burned against his neck as Anaxandros kissed his cheek. "Or keep your soul and see him dead, and I'll keep you alive to remember him for the rest of eternity."
Those are not choices!
