Chapter 17

Chapter 17

T he version of Andrian who strode down the dungeon hallway was the cruel stranger, the coldness behind his eyes nothing like the ice Mariah had learned how to melt.

“Of course, you’re still dressed like a little whore. How fitting.” His lips lifted from his teeth in a sneer.

Mariah held his stare. “Have I had much of a choice? I don’t see many other options for me down here.”

“You could simply wear nothing. You’re basically there now.”

She tilted her head, assessing him. Andrian—or whatever beast wore Andrian’s skin—leaned against the wall across from her cell, arms crossed and posture ambivalent. But she couldn’t help noticing that despite this not being her Andrian, despite the mask being one she didn’t recognize, it seemed there was no reason for his visit other than to taunt her. It was almost like … like he couldn’t stay away, like he was drawn to her for reasons the beast in his skin did not understand.

It made Mariah’s chest flutter with a fool’s hope. A hope born from the few flickering looks in his eyes, a hope fueled by the knife tucked beneath her mattress. A hope that now grew with the realization that perhaps it wasn’t the beast within that drew him down into the depths of the dungeons of Khento.

Perhaps, that was just … him . The pull between them was as difficult to ignore as it was when they’d both been adamant on fighting it.

That’s when her resolve settled, when her decision was reached.

She shifted forward on the cot, hiding the movement of her hand behind her body. She touched the cool handle of the paring knife as she tilted her head and morphed her expression, features relaxing into a mask she’d donned many times when she needed a man to obey her without him knowing.

Even if a man didn’t react well to power … they always responded to sex.

“Is that a suggestion, or an order?” she purred, voice low as she crossed her legs, doing what she knew best despite the lost muscle and pallid skin.

Andrian’s eyes flashed to her bare legs, and when they returned to hers, they were blazing.

He pushed off the wall and took the two steps to the bars of her cell. His expression was hungry, and it curled hatred in her gut for whatever it was inside him that dared to look at her like that.

But Mariah choked down on those feelings. She had a goal. She would do whatever it took to accomplish it.

“Come here,” he ordered, voice low and flat, but his eyes still burned.

Mariah, with a slow movement meant to flash more skin and allow her to hide the knife in her hand behind her back, rose from the cot. She took the few short steps to the cell door, holding that careful beguiling mask. She stopped just shy of his reach, blinking up through her lashes.

“Is this close enough?”

He growled, low and impatient. Shoving a hand in his pocket, he withdrew a familiar ring of skeleton keys. He shoved one of them into the lock of the cell, pulling it open with enough force for it to clang against the cell beside hers.

Andrian stormed through the door and was on her.

She let him paw and grab and pull her to him, hands possessive and foreign. His face buried into her hair, inhaling deeply from the skin of her neck.

“You even smell like her,” he whispered, low and dark and with a voice that raised the hair on Mariah’s arms.

She swallowed the last of her pride and disgust and continued playing the part she’d unknowingly practiced for years.

Arching her back, she slid her free hand up his chest, halting just below his collarbone. She leaned forward, whispering into his ear on a breathless exhale that wasn’t entirely forced.

“I can be whatever you want me to be.”

The answering growl against her felt hardly human. She was clutched harder, pushed toward the back wall of her cell until her spine hit cool stone, pinning her knife between it and her back.

Which was fine. Easier to hide as she continued to work.

The beast inside Andrian licked and smelled and tasted her skin, and she let him. He was distracted by her, by whatever it was about her that set him on edge in the same way it did her. She used it to her advantage to undo the first button of his shirt.

Then the next. And the next.

Down the line of his chest, until the skin below was visible. Until she was able to push the black material off his left shoulder, revealing the Mark tattooed on his skin by the hand of a god, the maw of a dragon wrapped around itself roaring and vengeful.

Mariah surged forward against him, freeing the hand behind her back. She took a moment to steady herself, clutching the knife by her side, focusing on the ground beneath her feet and the air filling her lungs. She dropped her right hand from his chest, flipped the knife in her left, and sliced a shallow, clean cut across the skin of her right palm. She leaned forward again, her lips brushing the shell of Andrian’s ear.

“If you’re in there, Andrian … I’m coming.”

With the last of her strength, she shoved him back, just enough for her knife to arch up to his chest.

Fueled by desperation, her aim was true. The sharp paring knife sliced a thin cut right over the line bisecting the dragon-shaped Mark. Ruby blood welled to the surface, beading around the black ink.

Before he could move, she lifted her bleeding palm and slammed it against his chest.

Andrian tensed, his body going rigid. They were both frozen, breathing heavily as they were suspended in time, breaths stirring the strands of the other’s hair. Mariah steeled herself, readying to descend into that ethereal region of light and darkness and magic that would bind their souls.

Until the seconds ticked by … and nothing happened.

Slowly—so, painstakingly slow—Andrian pulled back from her. Her hand was still pressed to his bleeding chest, their mingled blood running thin rivulets down his skin. With the gap between them widened, Mariah was able to glance at her hand, at her wrist. Her blood went cold as she realized her mistake.

The bond was missing the most important piece: her magic. Her eyes settled on the black and gold cuff encircling her wrist, searing the skin that was now covered in blood.

With defeat settling in her gut, she lifted her gaze from her shackles into his eyes.

They were so cold. So furious.

But not as cold and furious as she was expecting.

“You bitch, ” he spat, wrapping his hand around her wrist and pulling it from his chest. He shoved her back into the wall, his steps faltering as he stumbled away from her.

Mariah did not miss how his hands shook. How his face had drained of blood. He looked down at his chest, at the cut there and the stain of both their blood. His brow twisted, and he raised his attention back to her.

Mariah held herself utterly still, not even daring to breathe.

So many emotions flashed through his beautiful eyes. Confusion, shock, anger, horror, grief, rage. A cycling loop, a raging war in the ocean of violet blue.

He staggered back another step, lurching toward the open cell door. Bracing himself against it, he glared at her, chest still heaving.

“You … you will fucking pay for that.” His shaking hand pressed to his chest, smearing the red like war paint.

Mariah held her tongue, content to watch.

With another tremor, he stepped out of her cell. Fumbled for the keys in his pocket. Closed and locked the door before staggering down the hall, forgetting his allume lamp on the damp hallway floor.

Mariah stood there in the pale gold light, watching the shadows flicker around her. She eventually moved forward, reaching a hand through the bars of her cell to flip off the lamp. She sighed in relief as she was plunged back into darkness.

She perched herself atop the cold-hard edge of her cot. Opening her right palm, she stared at the thin, slowly clotting cut.

In her left palm, she still clutched the golden paring knife. It dripped with both hers and Andrian’s blood.

Then, there was the foul black and gold stone ringing her wrists. She felt the block it had erected in her mind, made of the same material, an impassable barrier to her magic.

She needed that magic back. And to get that magic back, she needed those cuffs removed from her wrist.

A feeling she didn’t dare acknowledge tugged at her gut as she wiped and cleaned her palm as best she could. As she wiped the polished edge of the blade and stored it back between her cot and the wall of her cell. As she settled herself into bed, pulling the threadbare sheet around her shoulders in search of some semblance of comfort.

She didn’t name that feeling until she sank into a cold, heartless, dreamless slumber.

Defeat.