The look of grim anticipation in the Bloodweaver’s gaze made my palms slick with nerves. I knew what that look meant. He was eager to make me hurt, to elicit the pain he was denied when I’d tricked him during our first bargain.
“I, Arden Farrow Flynch,” I began, wincing on the last word, “do solemnly vow to share the secret entrusted to me by the council with Devereaux Graves. I—” I stopped abruptly. A wild fear was creeping into my veins, twisting around my tongue and closing over my airway like tangled sinew. Every instinct screamed at me to stop. My very blood sang out against these vows as an abomination of my inheritance.
“And?” Evren prompted, a vicious smile curving his mouth.
Dread coiled around my throat. To be at the mercy of a Bloodweaver, aBludkravk, would be a terrible thing. But what choice did I have? With gritted teeth, I brought my knife across my palm. I averted my gaze, but not quickly enough to stop myself from seeing my blood spill onto the dais where it mingled with August’s and Neha’s. I caught a glimpse of the gash across August’s throat, his gray skin, and felt my stomach lurch. Gwen was crying but unharmed. Neha lay prostrate next to a dizzyingly large pool of blood. She wasn’t moving.Oh gods. I tried to calm my shallow breaths and focus on the task at hand.
Evren thrust his hand forward impatiently and I forced my fingers to remain steady as I carved an identical line through the flesh of his right palm. My stomach churned at the sight of so much blood, dark and viscous as it fell to the dais, some of it seeping beneath my silver heels.
Devereaux went last. We each swore our vows and spilled our blood in turn. Evren’s vow to allow Casimir and Gwen to leave the Grotto was brief and to the point. For his part, Devereaux made superfluous use of flowery, poetic language, and by the time he was finished, Evren looked ready to explode. But then—metal rolled across my tongue, and I knew the bargain was sealed.
It was all I could do to suppress my gasp as my arm burst into flame. I grasped at my left arm, knees buckling. The pain was so intense, it was all I could do not to scream.
A second rune had appeared to join the first. It was the Threxian rune, the Ethervalean symbol for debt.
Λ
“The bargain is now sealed,” murmured Devereaux.
“It is sealed,” Evren echoed, wrapping his hand in a silk handkerchief. “Now, tell us the secret,” he added impatiently.
Like a drug injected into my veins, I felt the compulsion to obey his command sluice through me. Unbidden, my lips parted to answer?—
“I vowed to share it with Devereaux Graves, and no one else,” I reminded Evren. Devereaux could decide whether to share it with his cronies.
While Evren glowered at the pair of us, Devereaux leaned in to let me whisper into his ear.
“There’s a way to end bloodbargains.”
He drew back, looking both elated and expectant. “Well, go on girl, tell me how to end them.”
“I don’t know how,” I replied truthfully. “That’s all I know.”
Devereaux gaped at me, and then his expression twisted into a glower to match Evren’s. “You deceived us,” he growled, his fury as palpable as the taste of iron on my tongue.
“I didn’t deceive you!” I protested. “I’ve told you everything!”
“What the fuck did she tell you, Dev?” Evren tugged at Devereaux’s elbow, and in a lower voice, added, “Entrust the secret with me, Dev, and I’ll make her spill whatever else it is she’s hiding.”
“No, youidiot!” Devereaux bellowed, wrenching free of his grasp. “She cannot conceal anything regarding the secret according to our own bargain terms.” He muttered a string of expletives under his breath, and then resumed his disparagement. “Fool, don’t you see? The girl has duped us into believing she knew more than she did?—”
“But what did she tell you? She must’ve known something!” he argued.
A flash of silver hair at the far end of the Grotto snagged my attention away from Evren and Devereaux’s bickering. It was Veronika. She was watching me intently, a warning gleam in her quicksilver eyes. She glanced over to where Casimir lay, gray-faced and envenomed, and then back at me, and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. I stared. What did she mean by it? Slowly, she lifted her arm. My eyes darted to her wrist, where an eye—the Moros—was burned into her skin. It was a twin to the one Casimir bore.
Knowledge is seeing with both eyes open.
Veronika winked at me as one by one, the members of the Bloodthorn Order began to fall.
39
Igazed around the room in stunned disbelief. Every member of the Order was retching uncontrollably, doubled over in pain.
“What the fuck is going on?” Evren exclaimed.
Devereaux stared at his Daemons as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes.
Evren turned his malicious gaze on me. “Did you do this?What did you do,you fucking—!?” His reaching fingers sought my throat, and without thinking, I lunged. My dagger slashed through the air, burying itself in the soft pulp of Evren’s left eye.