Chapter 229: The illusion of choice

EDELINA

The cold settled in my stomach.

I had always known he was a monster. There was little room for doubt about that. But hearing him speak of a girl he had murdered with the same casual regret one might reserve for a broken piece of furniture, knowing he would make the same choice again, made something inside me go very still.

"I think I still understand you," I said.

"Do you?"

"It isn’t the cage." I straightened, ignoring the soreness in my throat. "It’s you. You are a god, Lycaon. Or close enough that the distinction hardly matters. And I know that once you have your body and your strength back, you will return to being exactly what you were before. Apathetic. Cold. The sort of man who walks out of a room in the middle of a conversation because he has grown bored with the people in it."

"I helped you."

"You did."

"I want this curse broken as well. It is mine before it is yours."

"I believe you." And I did. That was the terrible part. "I believe you want it broken. I simply don’t believe you care whether I am alive when it happens. You want what you want, and everything else is secondary. The only reason you care about this curse is because it affects you. Not because of what it has done to me, not because of what it has taken from anyone else. Especially our people. Only because it inconveniences you."

He said nothing.

The silence stretched between us, thick with everything neither of us could reasonably dispute.

"But I am in your hands now, so all I can offer you is a truce and hope you see reason."

His eyes sharpened. "What does that entail?"

"If I fail." I lifted my chin. "If something happens to me before those three days are over. If I am killed, imprisoned, or if this curse finally finishes what it started and I die in my bed, then you will have a way out."

I raised one hand and counted off the conditions on my fingers.

"I will draw two vials of my son’s blood. One will go to an Omega in this house whom I trust. The other will go to a Lycan brother I have already planted as the illegitimate son of Alpha Sterling Grivas. Either of them can get to the tank. Johann’s blood will open whatever needs opening."

"There is a seal in the Alpha King’s study," he said. "One that can only be unlocked with royal blood."

"Good. Then you have your answer. His blood will do what needs to be done in their hands." I lowered my hand. "You have nothing to lose."

"And you don’t intend to make a fool of me in the process?"

"I would say we should make a soul kiss of it."

His expression changed. A smile appeared, slow and knowing.

"But I don’t know that you would want that," I continued. "Considering the burden of our last one was placed on the witch you possessed rather than on you."

His smile remained.

"Your little arrangement came to light when you killed the Willow girl to cover your tracks."

"Possession is difficult."

"Don’t insult my intelligence. You know perfectly well that isn’t the reason. You simply don’t trust me enough to share the burden. Perhaps it is even something more sinister than that knowing you."

"Is that what you think?"

"I know it." I shifted my weight, drawing my knees closer. "And, if I am being entirely honest, I don’t trust you either."

My voice faltered, just slightly, and I hated that he noticed.

"I cannot. Not after you abandoned us. You walked away from your wife, your people, everything you had sworn to protect, and left us to die while you went off to live your immortal life somewhere else. I will never forget that, Lycaon. Whatever you tell yourself about the circumstances, I will never forget what you did."

He did not defend himself.

Somehow, that was worse than any excuse he could have offered.

"But you are powerful," I continued, my voice quieter now. "And I will need you. So you will be released when I have everything in place and win. Or if I lose everything, but I have no intention of letting myself lose."

The grass whispered beneath us. For the first time since I had arrived, a faint breeze moved across the meadow, lifting the flattened strands in slow, undulating waves.

Lycaon rose.

He stood over me for a moment, his silhouette stretching against the pewter sky. I watched his hands, half expecting the claws to emerge, but he merely regarded me with that inscrutable expression of his.

"Very well," he said at last. "You have a truce."

I released a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.

"You don’t think I’ll double-cross you?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"You might." He smiled, genuinely this time, and the sight of it frightened me more than his hand around my throat. "If you had a capable witch, perhaps. But it is a very good thing I did what I did to that Willow girl. No witch will trust the royal family now. Not for a generation, I imagine. Not after such a brutal death."

My stomach dropped.

He had not simply killed her. He had thought beyond the killing, beyond the immediate inconvenience of having a witness who might expose him. He had considered what her death would mean, how it would be received, and what it would do to the professional and interspecies relationships I might otherwise have relied upon.

He had made her death useful.

And now I understood something I had been too frightened, too exhausted, to consider. Perhaps I had never been negotiating with him at all. Perhaps he had allowed me to believe I was offering him a way out when he had already begun closing every other door.

It made it sound as though he had actually planned ahead. Not as a sacrifice. Not as some unfortunate necessity. As a cage, built from my own grief and gratitude, with the bars carefully arranged around the shape of my fear.

"Lycaon..."

"Sweet dreams, Edie."

He crouched before me. His hand slipped beneath my chin, almost tenderly, and tilted my face towards his. I caught my reflection in the darkness of his eyes, small and pale beneath the colorless sky.

Then he leaned closer and blew.

It was the gentlest breath, no stronger than a child’s wish over a birthday candle.

But the meadow came apart.

The grass lifted in great sheets, the sky tore open, and the ground beneath my palms peeled away in long, pale ribbons. I tried to reach for something, anything, but there was nothing left to hold. The world dissolved around me, and I fell backward into the darkness.

The last thing I saw was his face, bright and patient, watching me disappear.