Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles #2)(52)

“There is no shame in surrender,” I told her, as a past Empress had once assured her victims.

Death had cut through the battalion I’d sent his way, and now was coming for me. All according to plan.

I watched him nearing, readying to take my head. Hatred, hatred, boiling. In the midst of this frenzy, another memory of my grandmother’s voice floated into my head: You take after Demeter, a goddess who was not to be crossed. When someone stole her daughter, she was so enraged, she refused to let crops grow, starving the entire world. Evie, there’s a viciousness in you that I must nurture. . . .

Flanked by protective thorns, I screamed with a godlike rage, and the whole world seemed to tremble.

I screamed for Jack and Matthew. For Finn, and even Selena. I screamed for my family and friends I’d lost. For this entire ruined planet.

I screamed because I was about to embrace the red witch once again.

I am the red witch! Would a future Empress see an image of this grisly scene and recoil? No. Because I’m going to win the entire game!

Kill them all? With pleasure.

When my scream ebbed, I motioned Death closer with both hands, nine wriggling fingers. He couldn’t know that my soldiers had bored out the side of this hill and the underpinning of the asphalt that stretched between him and me. A few steps closer, and he would plummet, hurtling through a chute to be trapped below with Lark.

“Afraid to strike? Come to me, Death. Touch me again.”

He approached as if in a trance. “Ease your wrath, and I won’t kill you today.”

I laughed, a throaty sound.

He reached my trap. The roadway crumbled; before he could escape, he dropped. At the last second, he stabbed one sword into the asphalt. He clung to his anchor as vines snaked up his body, curling around his shoulders and neck to drag him down. One of them struck his helmet free, revealing his perfect face, his grimly determined features. He showed no panic, not even when vines tangled over his head, across his mouth.

I stared into his glowing eyes. In a rush of dizziness, I remembered a time when they were bright in the night, looking down on me like stars. Just before his lips met mine—

Wham! Ogen tackled me with the force of a freight train. How?!

We crashed into the ground, with me breaking his fall. Ribs snapped. My head was flung back, cracking my skull. My vision wavered, my army stunned.

How had he escaped my poison and the pressure of those trees?

With the last of my strength, I sank my claws into the tough hide of his neck, injecting him with toxin until my fingers went numb.

He wrapped a hand around my throat, squeezing harder and harder. The Devil’s strength wasn’t fading?

As I stabbed Ogen frantically, I glimpsed Death with a blade between his teeth, climbing up from my trap.

Victorious.

Now it was Death’s turn to laugh. “Ogen is one of two players immune to your poisons. Come, Empress, ask yourself: why else would someone like me ally with someone like him?”

Under Ogen’s grip, something deep in my neck popped. My arms fell limp beside me. I couldn’t feel them. As my lids slid shut and consciousness faded once more, I heard Death grate words to Ogen in that foreign language.

What was the Reaper saying . . . ?



“To match your eyes.”

I gaze at the gift Death presents: a golden collar studded with emeralds. My sworn enemy is trying to woo me, has already declared his intention to take me to his bed.

I’ve been with him for four days, recuperating from his sword blow.

He sits next to me on my pallet in the tent we share. “Do you like it?” he asks, reaching forward to stroke my hair from my forehead. At the contact, his amber irises lighten, beginning to glow.

Death touches me at any chance, will shudder with want just from brushing his thumb over my bottom lip. He seems to relish baring his hands around me, snatching off his hated gloves the second he enters our dwelling.

“It’s beautiful,” I answer with honesty. He must have purchased the piece at the bazaar we passed earlier. I wish I could touch the gold, but my arms are bound behind me. Death wants me, but he does not yet trust me.

Though I am almost healed, I haven’t determined my strategy with him. I know I must escape him, but he has met up with his ally, the Devil. That brute guards the tent whenever Death leaves.

“The gift is very kind.”

“Kindness has nothing to do with it.” His lids grow heavy as he grazes the backs of his fingers along my jawline, then across my collarbone. “You are mine, Empress. You deserve fine things.”

His. Death’s. He intends to take me to his home far in the frozen north, far from my home of winter grasses and endless fields. As alien as this desert.

“Allow me.” He moves to put the collar around my neck, lifting up the length of my hair. Once he fastens the clasp, he presses a lingering kiss to my nape.

When I shiver, he groans against my skin, “You like my touch.”

Gods help me, I do. The hands that deliver death with such ease are beyond tender to me.

He moves closer, facing me. “Ah, creature, for that reaction, I shall buy you jewels every day.”

How different this must be for a boy who has killed everything else he touched. How many new experiences he can enjoy with me alone. I’ve caught myself wondering what it would be like to be possessed by him.

Still, when I am completely healed, I will strike.