What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(111)

Beauty didn’t matter when you were dead and rotting in the ground.

“Isn’t that better?” I asked, laying the tip of my knife to the fleshy part of her stomach. She growled, the sound humming up her throat and getting muffled once it hit her mouth. “Were you the first to violate him?” I asked, hating each and every question.

She shook her head; vehemently, in fact.

Truth.

Her eyes gleamed with it, and that primal part of me knew the response had been honest. I wished I could allow her to speak, to give me the names of all who still breathed. I’d have to get them from Caldris eventually, to remedy the mistake the Fates had made by allowing them to live.

I cut a long line across her stomach for her truth, trying not to look at the way blood seeped along her skin. It slid lower, covering the vile part of her that even I couldn’t bring myself to touch.

Torture and murder were one thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to violate her the way she’d done to Caldris—even if it would serve her right.

On and on, our game went until her body was a mass of slashes and cuts. Blood poured upon the bed, leaving her half-alive and begging for death. I wanted to vomit when I looked at what I’d done—at who I’d become. But the monster within me purred in delight, satisfied with the gift we would give to our mate.

I forced myself to place my blade at her breast, leaning into her face once again. I wanted the last thing she saw to be my face, an avenging fury as her own knife slid up and into her heart. I did exactly that, watching as she turned her stare down to where the hilt of the knife protruded from her chest.

Her face was shocked, her mouth parted. We never thought about that moment when it all ended until it was too late.

Her breath stopped, a ragged gasp leaving her as the shadows parted from her mouth and allowed me to look down upon the mangled remains of her body. I’d lost count of the cuts I’d made, of the times I’d hurt her for each crime she committed against Caldris.

“You’re as much a monster as me,” she mumbled, the words barely audible.

“For him, I will be.” I held her gaze as her final breath left her, her eyes going glazed as I dropped her knife beside the bed and stood from the edge. The feeling that rushed through me wasn’t as victorious as I’d thought it would be.

I stumbled as I got my feet beneath me, horror mounting in me. My creature was content to settle down for a nap, purring with pleasure at what we’d done and leaving me to the surge of emotions that came in the wake of her abandonment. I swallowed them down, biting them back as I called to the shadows that lingered around me.

Stepping into them, I let them take me to the shadow realm. I was half in a daze as I passed the hallway that led to that dining room.

The statue of Sarilda seemed to stare up at me, the gleaming stone of her face haunted. I shifted toward her, making the shadows halt with me as they opened up before me. Stepping into reality, I put my feet on solid ground once again as I stared up at her.

I knew nothing about her aside from what Mab had told me, but I couldn’t help but feel the similarities between the way Mab had killed her and the way I’d murdered Malazan. I pinched my lip between my teeth as the first tear fell, wondering if I could ever come back from this.

Burying my head in my hands, I resisted the urge to scream. I would have the love of my mate to see me through eventually, but for now, Caldris could never know it had been me. With our bond silenced—the window closed on my end—he would know nothing of what I’d done.

And Mab wouldn’t be able to pry the answers from him.

I pulled my hands away, sucking back deep breaths and reminding myself that Malazan had been a predator. Whether or not she’d hurt me in that moment, she’d tortured me. She’d tortured my mate and violated him—as well as countless others.

I turned toward the statues lining the halls, the Gods and Goddesses who had already lost their lives to Mab’s reign. My shadows crept through the hall, reaching behind each and every one of those statues and busts.

I bit my tongue as I pulled them forward, the sound of stone smashing upon the floor echoing up the hall. They cracked, pieces breaking off and ruining Mab’s testament to her conquest.

I destroyed her trophies of war, the heads she kept as reminders of exactly what she was capable of. Voices came from the mouth of the hallway; the sound of the destruction having alerted the guards to my presence.

I stepped into the shadows once more. They took me to the last place I wanted to go that night—to the one place I shouldn’t be. It was the only place I could go to change anything about the next day.

But it was also the only place that would tell Mab exactly who had been responsible.

I sighed when I reached the shadows of the boundary she’d formed, preparing myself for the way they would press against me, shoving me back.

They parted without a fight, recognizing me as one of them as I stepped through, moving toward the pits where the humans had been kept. Where they awaited their death in a matter of days.

I stepped forward, prepared to have to work quickly as I glanced down at the guards who would be the greatest problem with sneaking the humans into the shadows.

I took another step, drawing deep breaths.

And smacked my face into a wall of heat that kicked me back.

Light exploded through the shadows, singing my skin as I flew back through the shadow realm. For a moment, I wondered if the realm would fail, if the shadows would part and reveal me to the guards who walked around the edges of the pit outside of the realm that offered me haven.