Chapter 29

We set up camp just beyond the tree line in the small nestling of woods between The Red Tops and Emberbourne. Sin gathers a bushel of dry plant material and small, broken sticks to sustain the fire I brought to life with magic. Keeping the flames roaring with magic would be hardly a drain of energy, but Sin prepares the kindling regardless, and I'm beginning to think he just enjoys working with his hands. I watched as he birthed a fire from scratch the night he hunted me down after I stopped that arrow from piercing his heart, as if he didn't possess magic at all, which is certainly not the case.

Both of us too tired to hunt, we eat more of the salted meat and bread he packed in his bag. I study Sin as he tears off chunks of the dried meat with his teeth, his black shirt pulling tight across his chest and arms each time he raises his hand to his mouth.

I imagine it is exhaustion that has him so quiet—preparing his armies for their final stand against Legion surely has left his mind and body in need of rest. My temples throb at the mere thought of what it must be like dealing with Dusaro every day.

"Thank you for bringing me there." I hadn't been able to voice my appreciation before, but it feels wrong to not extend some sort of acknowledgment.

His slender eyes flash to mine, and he wipes the back of his hand across his face. "I would like you to answer something for me."

I blow out a breath and look at him pointedly. Of course he wants something in return. "What?"

"You mentioned before that your parents tossed you out when you were young… after they learned what you were."

"Are," I correct.

"How did they find out?" he continues.

The smell of blood, it… appeals to me, I told him the night he interrogated me in the cell.I swallow hard. I hate talking about them, why is he asking this now? Perhaps he noted my tear-stained cheeks when I brushed past him outside the temple and suspected I had seen more than just Elysande inside those walls.

"My mother… is a cruel woman. She was very heavy handed, and to put it lightly, a complete and utter bitch. She punished me with great severity even when I had done nothing wrong." I tear my eyes away and stare into the flames before continuing, not wanting him to see the tears pricking the corners.

"But I was an only child and lonely, and despite hating her, I craved her attention still. I sometimes misbehaved just to get her to notice me. In hindsight, I think I struggled regulating my emotions because no one knew what I was, what I was capable of. I had all these urges and violent desires bottled up inside me, and I didn't know how to handle them, or channel them in a healthy way.

"One day, I was so upset about something she said to me—so mad—that I didn't even think about the consequences of my actions. I grabbed her arm and shredded it with my nails. I don't know why I did it. I just… in that moment… I wanted to. I was furious and wanted to hurt her. But then she started bleeding and… I had never made someone bleed before that day. The smell was intoxicating. I couldn't think right, see right, nothing… It was like I became a different person when I smelled the blood. Everything about it drew me in—the color, the smell… I wanted to taste it. Something came alive in me at that moment."

I wipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand, hating myself for presenting the breaches in my armor to him on a silver platter, but also not caring. If I'm going to die anyway, what's the harm in one more person knowing my story?

"It was that moment she knew what I was, and that moment, she cast me out of her house and out of her life."

I dare a sideways glance in his direction and find him absentmindedly running a hand across his jaw as he watches the fire hissing and popping between us. "What of your father?" Sin asks quietly.

I shrug my shoulders. "My father was a decent enough man I suppose, though he never protected me from her. He loved me in his own way… I think… but I wouldn't say he was a good father. If he had found someone other than my mother to share his life with, then I think maybe he could have been. But she ruined him, and he allowed her to."

When I glance back at him again, this time I find him watching me, his bronzed hands clasped together and dangling over his bent knees.

He clears his throat. "I'm sorry for the pain you endured at their hands. Say what you want about the kingdom, Ephraim, me… but when I hurt someone, it's strategy. It's war. But parents beating on their own young is something reserved for the lowest of monsters."

"It seems we may have one shared belief after all, Your Grace."

"When Legion captured you the first time—the time your sister found you—you and Cathal were… involved." Not exactly a question, but his face burns with curiosity.

"For a while, yes. He came into the inn I helped run. This was before they were ever known as Legion, when no one even knew what they were planning. I'm not too proud to admit I acted out of loneliness back then and soaked up the attention he was all too willing to give me. Cathal was the only other person I shared my secret with, apart from my family. My other family," I clarify. "I trusted him, and it was a mistake. One I won't make again."

"Tell me about it."

I raise an eyebrow and shoot him a dubious look to which he raises a dark brow of his own and mirrors my expression. "What, do you have somewhere else to be?" He motions around us to drive home his point that we're both stuck in the woods for the remainder of the night.

A short laugh falls out of me—okay, fine. "Cathal came for me the same night I confided in him. He brought a few others with him, and they bound me in iron and threw me on a horse. Dragged me to the other side of Autumnhelm where they had camps set up for their expanding army. Legion was actively recruiting then, in secrecy of course. I didn't know what was going on, or who the people were. And then… and then they threw me off the horse and—" I trail off, remembering the stench of their worn boots as they took turns kicking me in the gut.

"And what?" he prompts.

"And they did bad things to me." My voice is void of emotion, as if saying it out loud would be too painful, so my mind pretends I'm speaking about someone else.

"The same bad things they did to Ileana?" he asks.

I pull my knees to my chin and wrap my arms around my legs. I don't know if I'm more surprised that Ileana shared her experience with the Black Art or that she trusted him enough to be so vulnerable.

"Yes… but just once. That first night. After that, they kept me chained to a tree away from where they all slept. But I would have chosen that over what Ileana went through. They forced her most nights. I… I could usually hear it." My arms wind tighter around my legs as I hug them to my chest.

A glint of something other than the crackling fire flares in his eyes, but it's not directed towards me. "Fuck, Wren. Where's a godsdamned drink when you need one?"

I flash him a dangerous smile. "I have a feeling our taste in drink differs, Your Grace." My eyes drop to the long lines of his tanned neck.

His slivered eyes widen for a brief moment and then a smirk that is pure devastating pulls up the corner of his lips. "Still thinking about what I taste like, love? I said you could take a bite."

"If I'm remembering correctly, Blackheart, only one of us has bitten the other."

His expression twists into something darker, feral even, as he parts his lips and drags the tip of his tongue across the fronts of his teeth. "And if I'm remembering correctly, you tasted divine."

I capture my bottom lip between my teeth as I mull over his words, distracted by that look he gives me. The one he's giving me right fucking now.

He's toying with me. Trying to lighten the mood after I darkened it with my confessions. Fine. I could use a distraction.

"It's not often I let men that speak of what I taste like live, Your Grace."

He shrugs a shoulder as if I didn't just threaten him, facetious or not. "Me either."

"Excuse me?"

Sin leans forward, his green eyes burning with as much heat as the fire between us, locked on mine. "I also don't intend to let men live that would dare speak of your… exquisite flavor."

The warmth on my face isn't entirely from the flames now, but I don't dare look away first. I refuse to let him think he's embarrassed me, even if internally, every part of me is itching to sink into the ground and never reemerge.

"It's a bit of a stretch to refer to a single bite as tasting me. I'd prefer you didn't."

"Didn't taste you?"

He's definitely toying with me. "You know what I meant. But yes, that too."

He licks his lips. "Liar." His mouth rounds around the word.

"I beg your pardon?" I scoff.

His eyes flicker between both of mine. "I don't think you minded it at all. In fact, I'd say the scent coming off you right now indicates the opposite."

I feel my eyes widen as I cross my arms across my chest and curl my legs off to the side. I don't know if he's merely teasing me, or if his boosted magic actually has heightened his sense of smell, just as mine is attuned to blood.

Sin laughs softly, then relaxes, leaning back and resting his arms behind his head. I mirror him from across the fire, and a twinge of loneliness pangs in my chest at the sight of the nighttime sky. Cosmina and I lay under the stars so many nights as we chatted about our days and our hopes for the next. A part of me wonders if she's looking up at the sky now too, wherever she is, and if she thinks of me when she does.

I'm coming for you, sister. Perhaps she will feel my message as she gazes upon the stars shimmering with the vibrancy of a thousand suns.

"Has she told you why she hates me?" I whisper.

He doesn't need me to specify who. "Ileana said you left without her."

"I did."

"Would you have been able to free her with them keeping her so heavily guarded?"

"Not while I was weak from the iron, and there were too many for Cosmina to handle on her own—way too many. With the iron in my blood, I wouldn't have been able to control the magic well enough to restrain it to wound and not kill. I was too much of a coward to risk it. Cosmina did what she came to do—she rescued me. I don't blame her for it at all. I could have gone to Ephraim to report what I knew, but I was afraid he'd be suspicious as to why Legion had taken me in the first place, and I was scared he'd piece it together and learn what I am. Ileana suffered because of my fears. She has every right to hate me."

"Ileana is strong though. She freed herself and fled before they could catch up to her. And knowing my Black Hand, I don't think she would have been content allowing someone else to rescue her anyway."

I smile to myself. Ileana is many things, but a coward is not one of them. I envy the fire inside her. "How did she end up at Scarwood?"

"After her escape, she sought refuge at the castle. She didn't have a home—not one she wanted to return to anyway—and she reported everything to Ephraim and my father who was his Hand at the time. Ephraim offered to shelter her while she recovered. She never left the keep—she barely left the castle—probably too afraid they'd somehow be out there. It really shook her up when Ephraim was killed in Suncove.

"We all assumed my father would be the one to take his place, but as you know, he was refused at the Rite. I performed it next out of obligation. I never thought in a million moons I'd be chosen, but when I began the ritual… it was like my body didn't belong to me anymore. I could feel my magic getting stronger by the second, it was like my blood was being set on fire. And when I thought it would never stop, it did. In a blink of an eye, I was chosen.

"I would have appointed my father as Hand, but since our law forbids familial ties, I allowed him to choose. He wanted Ileana. I think he just liked that she hated Legion as much as he did, and since she is mundane, it made sense for her to serve as emissary to a mostly mundane land. I wasn't sure she'd accept, but to my surprise, she was thrilled and accepted immediately. She never mentioned a bloodwitch when we told her to tell us everything she knew about Legion."

It takes me a moment to make sense of everything he shares. I suppose Ileana wouldn't have the same reasons to hate the kingdom that I did, but to serve as the Black Hand.

And then it hits me.

Ileana can use her position to make sure Legionpays for their crimes. She may not have magic in her veins, but being the Black Hand gives her an entirely different kind of power to wield.

Ileana didn't hide that she knew who and what I was the night in the ballroom. Sin knows she didn't disclose that sensitive information. He could have executed her for treason. But he didn't.

"Are you two betrothed?" Perhaps the rumors circulating the ballroom held some truth after all. It would explain why he spared her if she is his intended.

He pauses for a beat and then chuckles to himself. "My father would like that very much, but no, we are not. Even if I was interested, I… I don't think I could pursue her, at least not for a while. Ileana is still very nervous around men. She won't be alone with them in a room. Even when she's alone with me, she is… easily startled. If I courted her, she would feel pressured to accept my advances due to my position, and that isn't right. She is learning to trust me, and I respect her too much to jeopardize that."

Sin may have inherited some of the wickedness of his father, but he isn't that kind of monster. I roll onto my side and prop my head up with my hand. "Did you fight in the war with Baelliarah?"

"Yes." His tone is clipped.

"You would have been young," I say, noting that Sin can't be much older than me.

"Yes."

I study his expression that has turned somber, and wonder if he regrets the feud between the two lands, when our transcendents fled to our closest neighbor, seeking refuge from Ephraim's tyrannical reign. It wasn't that Ephraim cared about his people that fled—he just didn't want to risk them forming an army across the sea. Innocent blood was shed in that war, of both transcendent and the mundane that tried to protect them. And Sin had been one of the soldiers that crossed the sea to retrieve what was never theirs in the first place.

"Thank you for taking care of her," I whisper. Despite my hatred for the kingdom, I'm not ignorant enough to not realize there were far worse fates for my friend.

"I will make you another deal, Wren."

I prop myself up fully now, noting this is the second time he's used my actual name tonight. Sin sits up and meets my stare with an expression more serious than I've seen on him in a while.

"Fight with me—give all of yourself to me—and we wipe out Legion permanently. Do that, and I vow to release you."

My gut clenches as my organs perform a series of somersaults inside my stomach. "When you say all of me, you mean I would have to kill them?"

He nods slowly. "If it comes to that, which it likely will, yes."

"You aren't worried I'll lose control?"

The Black Art leans towards me, his eyes sweeping both of mine as if searching for a reason not to trust me. "Are you?"

My breath catches. Just this morning, I scolded him for asking me that same thing when neither he nor his predecessors ever bothered to ask before. But now he presents the question laced with compromise.

I rack my brain for the right words to respond with, but it's as if every thought I ever had, and every argument I rehearsed in my head for this very moment, has vanished. I close my eyes and inhale through my nose, steadying my breath and my thoughts.

"I damn well owe it to myself to try. And even if I lose control and you have to put me down after the war is won, it's worth it if it means freeing my sister."

He nods in understanding, and with the moon above as witness, I make a deal with a devil.