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"You don't mean that," she panted. "You love me, and I love you."
"I don't know you…and you don't know me."
"But…" She pushed herself out of the chair and tried to walk over to him, but her legs wouldn't hold her. She collapsed on the floor. "There's something wrong with me."
"Everything has a price." Holding out his right hand, he flexed his ring finger. "The price for playing with the Sadist is pain."
She watched the snake tooth slide out beneath the long, black-tinted nail. "You…youpoisoned me?"
He looked at her and smiled a cold, cruel smile. "Yes."
Remembering the prick she felt, she tried to reach up and touch her neck. "You poisoned me… while… I… was…"
"Coming. Yes."
"Why?"
"Because of your obsession with me, you tried to hurt Jaenelle. So you will be the lesson for any other bitch who thinks she can have me if she eliminates the competition. Just between you and me, darling, if I have to kill every witch in Amdarh to assure no one tries to hurt Jaenelle again, I'll do it and have no regrets.You're all expendable, and she is… everything."
Lektra stared at him, fighting for each small gasp of air. Pain danced through her limbs, setting her nerves on fire. She would have screamed if she could have drawn enough breath.
"Daemon… help me."
"I will," he promised. "Before you draw your last breath, I'll finish the kill. At least you won't have to face the High Lord and endure this kind of pain a second time."
As her lungs failed and her vision faded, she tried to see her beautiful love one last time. And even though he stood in front of her, the only thing she saw as the cold Black rage ripped through her was those glazed, sleepy eyes and that cold, cruel smile.
After he finished the kill, Daemon studied the room. The Blood had a saying: The walls remember. Wood and stone could hold strong emotions, and a skilled Black Widow could draw out those feelings and replay a ghostly image of what happened in a room.
At another time in his life, he would have walked away from this room, would have, most likely, added a few seduction spells that would have been triggered by drawing the memories out of wood and stone. Whoever had come to watch the events leading up to Lektra's death would have felt those phantom hands, those phantom mouths. They would have stood there, helpless to escape, knowing how the previous seduction ended.
It wouldn't have killed them, but the message would have been clear: anyone who tried to play games with his life or someone he loved would die.
But there was Jaenelle to consider, and he didn't want this game paraded before the rest of the Blood. He felt soiled enough being near Lektra and Roxie. So he would leave enough of a warning for the witches in Amdarh. As for the rest… He could deal with that easily enough.
2
Surreal stood across the street and watched the town house burn. She'd spent the evening wandering the nearby streets, passing by the town house often enough to keep an eye on things. Because Sadi had said Lektra was his business, not hers, she'd kept her participation to a passive
watch.
So she'd been nearby when witchfire suddenly filled two of the upstairs rooms. She didn't run to the town house to pound on the door and
alert the servants. There was no need. The Sadist had his own kind of jus-tice, and the fire remained in those two rooms until the last servant had fled. Then the witchfire took the town house, roaring up to twice the structure's height, a beacon for the rest of the Blood in Amdarh.
They'd come running, but witchfire was fed by power, and there was nothing they could do to extinguish a fire fed by the Black. The water wagons were brought out, and the roofs of the neighboring town houses were doused, but the fire remained confined. He would have made sure of that before he walked away.
"Here," Lucivar said, joining her. He handed her a steaming mug of coffee. "It's damn cold to be standing around."
"Is it this cold a couple of blocks away?" she asked, taking a sip of coffee.
"No."
He'd arrived in Amdarh just as the rest of the town house went up, so they'd found each other easily enough. He, too, would have recognized the fire as a signal…and a warning.
After taking a sip from his own mug, he called in a bundled napkin, used Craft to balance it on air, then flipped open a corner.
Surreal grabbed one of the rolls filled with meat and cheese. She took a big bite, washed it down with coffee, then asked, "Where did you get these?"
"Dining house down the street a little ways. They were still open when the fire started, so they stayed open to keep serving food and drink."
"At least someone will profit from the evening." Finishing the first roll, she checked the napkin bundle, pleased to see two more stuffed rolls. Lucivar was going to share fairly…and just in case that wasn't what he had in mind, she took another roll and bit into it.
"And let's hope this is the only thing in Amdarh that burns tonight," Lucivar growled, using the mug to point to the carriage and riders slowly moving up the street.
The carriage stopped. Zhara stepped out and was immediately surrounded by her guards.
"He doesn't have any reason to go after her, does he?" Surreal asked.
"Not that I know of," Lucivar replied.
Someone pointed them out. Zhara and her circle of guards pushed their way through the crowd. On Zhara's command, the guards stepped aside so the Queen of Amdarh could face Surreal and Lucivar without looking over a wall of male bodies.
"Is Daemon Sadi responsible for this?" Zhara demanded.
Lucivar took a long swallow of coffee before answering. "Yeah, he is."
"Did he also kill Lord Tavey?"
"Sadi killed a Warlord?" Surreal asked.
"At the party the other night," Lucivar replied. "He was fairly neat about it…in a messy sort of way."
"I'm so glad I didn't know that."
"Stop it, both of you," Zhara snapped. "You find this all amusing? It's likely Lady Lektra and her friend were caught in that fire."
"They wouldn't have been alive when the fire started." Surreal shrugged. "What do you want us to say, sugar? The little bitch played a game with the Sadist…and she lost."
Zhara went very still. "What did you call him?"
Lucivar vanished his mug. "In Terreille, they called him the Sadist… with good reason. If you want to push at him for going after a witch who spread those rumors about him and tried to hurt Jaenelle, you go right ahead. You'll live just long enough to regret it."
