My foot tapping on the floor was the only sound as every single person stared at me.
A full minute went by, and I clenched my fists at my side.
“If I have to ask again,” I murmured, my wings twitching, “you’ll all answer to Queen Marguerite’s justice. And believe me, if you think I’m bad, you don’t want to know what she will do to you.”
I was a weapon. That was why she Made me. First and foremost, that was my duty.At one time, I had a conscience.
It was gone now.
Decades of being sent on errand after errand and being used as a tool had wiped my conscience clean away.Athena had been the last straw. When she died, she took that last bit of my humanity with her.Now, I just did what I was told.
What good was a conscience when one was an instrument of death?
Unfurling my fist, I let a shadow escape from my palm. It slithered through the room like a hound seeking a scent.
“Last chance.” I turned in a slow circle, eyeing the crowd carefully as they took a collective step back. “Ireallydon’t want to let my shadows out to play, but if you don’t speak, I will.”
I had to. Mother didnotallow for failure. Better they face me than her.
A moment later, a female elf with long black hair and sable horns sitting on a werewolf’s lap raised her hand. She wore a sky-blue strip around her breasts and another around her middle, covering her nakedness, and I knew her to be a worker of this establishment.
“Yes?” I growled.
“I-I know where he went.”
Thank all the gods.
I was not in the mood for killing tonight.
Stalking over to the female, I took her arm. Calling my shadows back to me, I led the female into the night.
By the time the sun was rising over, I had everything I needed.Mother was going to be happy.
As for me, I was… existing.
“Sebastian?” The sound of my name pulled me back to the present, and I blinked.
Luna stood in front of the bed, her brown brows raised. “I asked if you had a choice in this?”
I sighed. “I haven’t had choices in centuries.”
The words slipped out of me, and my eyes widened. I hadn’t meant to say them, and I wasn’t sure where they came from, but the moment they left my lips, I knew them to be true.
Choices were things given to people who weren’t weapons. Isvana didn’t give me a choice when she poured more than my fair share of her power into me. Mother didn’t give me a choice when she sent me on her errands. I most certainly had not been given a choice when it came to marrying Luna.
Choices were things of my old life. Of my humanity. Before I was Made, I had choices.
Now, I did what I was told.
Luna frowned. A long pause stretched between us before she slid back onto the mattress beside me.
“I’m sorry, Sebastian,” she whispered.
Reaching over, she placed her hand on my knee. The touch was light, but it reverberated through my entire body. Her eyes widened, and she stared at the place where our bodies touched, as though she hadn’t meant to do that.
She did not pull away. Instead, Luna shook her head. “No one should have their choice taken away from them.”
Sucking in a breath, I nodded. My thoughts were divided between blood-soaked memories of the past and the female sitting beside me.