What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(117)
I raised my chin, smirking slightly as I bared the corner of my teeth. Caldris moved to stand behind me, a silent sentry, and placed his hand atop my bare shoulder. I felt the moment my Fae mark sparked to life with the contact, that mix of golden glow and inky darkness illuminating my skin.
“No,” I said, my smile deepening alongside Mab’s scowl.
Her brow furrowed as her nostrils flared, her anger pulsing off her as she raised a hand. I couldn’t fight her when Caldris’s knees buckled slightly, and I felt him resist the urge to touch his heart.
The idea had been to make a spectacle. To give the courts something to whisper about. But I grew tired of whispers and secrets in the dark.
I wanted what was real.
I grasped the shadows pulsing off her hands, pulling on the threads attached to them as she fought to hold tight to the magic held within her grasp. I gripped those threads as I crossed them, watching her eyes widen as the bare glimmer of gold wrapped around her wrist.
“Someone taught me a lesson a long time ago, and I don’t think anyone has ever done you the courtesy,” I said, taking a single step forward as I pulled the threads taut.
Mab’s face twisted as the threads cut through her flesh.
They slashed through flesh and bone—pulling and sawing—until her hand dropped upon the gray stone of the ballroom floor. She stared at it in shock for a moment, blood pulsing off her severed wrist to puddle on the floor beside it.
“You should not play games with that which you cannot control, and you definitely should not toy with the Fates,” I said softly, ignoring the frenzied whispers of all who lingered in the throne room.
Mab stared at her wrist in horror, waiting for her hand to grow back. I hadn’t cut her with iron after all, so it should be something she could heal. Her face paled, her mouth dropping open into a silent scream. For all purposes, she should have been shrieking. Her pain should have been evident throughout the room.
One of her more loyal followers approached her side, raising her skirt and tearing off a piece of fabric from it. She wrapped it around Mab’s wrist, and I was gratified in the knowledge that it would normally have been Malazan who tended to her.
“Summon the witch,” the woman snapped, turning to one of Mab’s other minions. The other woman fled the ballroom, going in search of whatever witch she could find.
Mab paled as she looked around, realizing the implications of me harming her permanently. I hadn’t known it was possible, hadn’t known the threads could inflict permanent injury in the same way as iron, but something about it felt right.
As soon as she’d tended to Mab, the woman stepped forward, summoning Mab’s guards to surround us.
“Kill them all,” she snapped, ignoring Mab’s protest behind her. Mab and I both knew I was worth far more alive than dead if she could find an efficient way to control me.
I raised a hand, grasping the woman’s thread of life between my fingers and plucking it like a harp. She jolted forward the moment she felt me pull on it, raising a hand to signal the men back. They paused, hesitating as they studied me.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice dropping into the quiet of a whisper.
I grinned as her cheeks flushed with humiliation. “I should think it was obvious. I want all of you to suffer for your part in your people’s suffering.”
***
My body was on fire—burning from within.
But I remained silent as two witches stepped into the ballroom, making their way to Mab without hesitation. Neither of them was Imelda, and I craned my head to find the witch. She stepped in front of me, appearing from the crowd as if summoned. She dragged me from the center of the chaos, taking me to the edges of the ballroom. I couldn’t believe that we’d not been dragged to the dungeon following my outburst.
We’d stoked the flames of rebellion, but I didn’t know if it would be enough. If Mab’s lack of reaction would somehow hinder our cause.
Imelda’s fitted forest green dress clung to her shoulders, showing off a line of cleavage that I couldn’t help but wish Holt had been around to see. It was fitted through her like a glove, hugging the flawless curves that defined her body.
She touched a hand to my cheek, flinching back the moment her skin touched mine.
Caldris stepped closer, concern filling his face at whatever lingered in Imelda’s gaze when she turned her attention to him.
“She’s burning,” Imelda whispered, glancing around the ballroom.
Most of the partygoers were distracted, too fixated on the spectacle of Mab shouting at the witches who fought to stem the bleeding.
“What do you mean, she’s burning?” my mate asked, touching his hand to my skin. He didn’t flinch back, didn’t seem bothered by the heat filling my veins like slow poison.
It stemmed from my hands, spreading up through my forearms and reaching my body in a languid fluid. The threads of fate clung to everything, surrounding me like a temptation. The beast within me wanted to pull on them, to see what I could change about the world around me with a flick of my fingers.
“There are too many,” I murmured, staring into Imelda’s mismatched eyes.
“She’s channeling too much, too fast. Magic has a price, and she is spiraling. If she keeps using like this, there will be nothing left. Her magic needs to be nurtured. It needs to be trained and fed and taught to obey her,” Imelda explained, rummaging through the small pack she’d kept at her side. “Right now, it is wild. It’s untamed. If she can’t find a way to leash it, it will consume her. She’ll become nothing more than a vessel for it, and there’s no telling what it will do.”