She tried to keep her hand pinned to her side, but the magic from the bargain we’d struck when I’d agreed to help her escape Robert forced her palm into mine. Magic bound us, an invisible tether.
“I will never forgive you for this,” she hissed. “Never.”
“I can live with that.” I deserved every bit of her hatred and more.
Ruairi appeared in the doorway, ever the thorn in my side. He didn’t so much as acknowledge me. No, he looked straight past and locked eyes with my mate. “Everything all right, human?”
The pooka needed to mind his own feckin’ business before I plucked his eyes from his skull and impaled him on a pike. “Everything is fine, Ruairi.” I said. “Go back to the parlor.”
“I wasn’t askin’ ye.”
I sent the irritating bastard to the dungeon before he could cause any more trouble. “Now that we have that nasty business out of the way, would you like to see your sister?”
23
Aveen peeredinto the coffin that had been her bed for the last six months, a frown tugging at her full lips.
“I know you won’t believe me, but I love your sister,” Tadhg said, his voice tinged with enough regret to fill an ocean.
Her frown only deepened. “Lust and love are two different things.”
“I am acutely aware of the difference,” he muttered.
Aveen touched her sister’s face lovingly, tracing the black curse along her jaw. “Is the cursed dagger the only way to bring her back before the year is up?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said, knowing where this conversation was headed.
“And all I have to do is kill one of you with it?” she asked.
I had to admit, the way her eyes sparked with murderous intent made me hard.
“You can kill me,” Tadhg said.
Feckin’ eejit. He may have been a pain in the arse most of the time, but he had a role to play in Tearmann, same as me. If I could wake up day after day and do my job, so could he. “If I have to listen to this martyr shite for the next year, I’m going to stab myself with the feckin’ thing.”
Aveen’s head swung toward me, her curls dancing along her collarbone. “Where’s the dagger now?”
As pretty as she was when she wanted to kill me, there wasn’t a hope of me telling her where I’d hidden the dagger. “That, murderous Aveen, is none of your business.”
She batted those long lashes of hers, all warmth and innocence, so good at playing the role, I almost believed her. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll trade your life for Keelynn’s?”
“You don’t have it in you.”
She stepped toward me, that gleam returning to her eyes tenfold. “Give me the dagger and we’ll see.”
Tadhg emerged from his wallowing long enough to laugh. “I like this one. She’s vicious.”
I shifted my ceremonial dagger, offering it to her. How far would she push this?How angry are you?“Go on, then. Stab me with it.”
Her fingers wrapped around the dagger, and I remembered the way they’d wrapped around my cock. This shouldn’t be doing it for me, but it was. It really was. “Like I said. You don’t have it in—”
She drove the blade into my arm and smiled. “You were saying?”
She wanted to play, did she? I let her see the monster living inside me, the black stain on my soul that told everyone who saw it that I didn’t lose. That I was willing to go to any lengths to get what I wanted. “You ruined my feckin’ shirt.”
Aveen just kept smiling.
I shoved Tadhg toward the door. “You. Out.”