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I shook my head. “Not at all. Until we have at least a quorum, there’s not much I can do alone to protect Triskeles.”
Nothing but stay alive.
39
SHARA
Hours later, I hugged Gwen goodbye after enjoying a delicious dinner, and then made my way back upstairs. I’d sent Lew and Thierry up before the food arrived to wait for me in the room of my birth. I loved Thierry and wanted him to be a part of my life while he could, but I didn’t think I could stomach eating with the stench of death in my nose.
“Would you like me to wait outside?” Rik asked.
I paused outside the black carved door and shook my head. “No. I need you to come inside, just in case.”
He didn’t ask why. Perhaps he already sensed what I intended to do, though I hadn’t allowed myself to dwell on it over dinner, for fear I might burst into tears.
The door pushed open silently. My two Blood knelt beside the sunken tub, facing the door. I half expected to see Esetta hovering with them, even if they couldn’t see her, but evidently she hadn’t made an appearance yet. Maybe she couldn’t.
Not with the living.
Despite all that Lew had suffered in House Skye, he was definitely still alive.
Rik had died when I’d envenomed him as the cobra queen. Which was why I needed him to stay.
I walked around Lew’s side and sat on the low tile wall of the sunken tub behind him. Without needing any instruction, Rik moved closer on my other side, hovering with full attention on Thierry. Ready to stop him if he tried to touch me unexpectedly.
I didn’t think he would. Not of his own accord. But the tremors had started again, and his words were getting harder to understand. His body was rotting shockingly fast, and if I needed to heal him again…
I couldn’t risk it. Not now.
All my instincts insisted I needed to be ready. Springs coiled inside me, ready to burst free into action. When the time came to strike the Dauphine, I wouldn’t have time to stop and feed well and deeply. I needed to be prepared. Not drained.
Before I could say anything, Lew turned toward me, pressing against my legs. “Yes. Please.”
My throat tightened but I managed a tremulous smile for him. He’d already taken his shirt off, but he’d kept the rest of his clothes on. Picking up my hands in his, he pressed kisses to my palms and relaxed against me. Stretching out his long legs past Thierry, his head on my shoulder, his body soft and open to me.
Droplets of golden starlight flickered in his eyes. Capturing this moment in his memory bank.
The moment I killed him.
I pressed my lips to his forehead, my left arm curling around his shoulders.
And shoved my right hand into his chest.
His breath exploded out on a long gasp, but he didn’t struggle. He tried to make it as easy as possible for me to kill him. Though he was too heavy, too big, for me to hold by myself. Rik shifted closer, supporting my arm with one hand while keeping his other ready to throttle Thierry if needed.
But my mother’s former Blood only watched his alpha and friend shudder when I pulled out his spirit in my bloody fist.
Lew’s bird was a large golden-brown eagle. Not surprising given his gryphon but far larger than Thierry’s white-headed bird. The eagle stretched out its wings and screeched at me, but it didn’t try to fly away. It stayed on its back, its talons curling around my arm.
Tears streamed down my face while I watched Lew’s body die. The red-gold light in his eyes dimmed to muddy brown with a flat, empty stare. His skin leached of color, as gray as Thierry’s. The dead weight of his body cooled against me. On my skirt. My hair. Pinning me in place.
Not that I would have left him anyway, but it was disconcerting just the same.
I waited several long moments, silently crying. I wasn’t sure how long he needed to be dead for this to work, but I didn’t want to do it again.
“That’s enough, Shara,” Esetta said.
Rik and Thierry both looked up at the same time as me. They heard her. Saw her. Standing in the same place I’d seen her the night before.
