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Isobel’s hands rose of their own accord, knotting themselves into a single, useless ball. She held them close to her chest, where she could feel the rapid thrum of her heart.
“Your choices, limited though they are, do appear rather clear-cut, do they not?” Lilith asked Reynolds. “Yet you hesitate. And that is what betrays you as being the one lost to self-deception. For, despite what you have convinced yourself of, you have not truly decided at all in whose corner you will stand . . . have you?”
There it was again. Isobel saw it. The smallest twitch on those hawkish features.
“Whether you have been consciously aware of it or not,” Lilith continued, “you have been waiting. Playing sides while biding your time to see whether the girl might achieve the upper hand, might defy your estimation of her once again and, somehow, against all odds, best me. The prospect of your release, I am certain, holds enough allure for you to indulge in such an ambitious gambit. I almost don’t blame you. She is tenacious. But now we’ve arrived at the moment of truth. You stand to lose your wager, as she has yet to live up to your lofty expectations. What will you do?”
Isobel’s gaze found Varen’s. He watched her through the mussed strands of his ashy hair, and like so many times before, he needed only his calm jade eyes to communicate a warning to her.
Hold off, he seemed to be telling her, and it took every ounce of self-control Isobel possessed to remain planted. To do nothing. To merely watch and endure.
“What a predicament indeed,” Lilith went on. “For if you kill the boy and destroy the link, it will prove quite difficult for you to honor your vow to return our dearest Isobel to her so thoughtfully preserved world. Especially since, despite your unique and enviable ability to traverse the realms, which you have managed to keep hidden from me for so long, you would not be able to do so from the place where I would send you. Even if you did manage the feat, you would still have me to contend with upon your inevitable return. But . . . should you do me the kind favor of removing the boy’s talisman and eliminating the small barrier currently standing between me and what is rightfully mine, you would then have something to grant you immunity, wouldn’t you? To purchase a small sliver of the time you have perhaps not had quite enough of.” As if to illustrate her point, Lilith took a single step forward, her increasing nearness to Varen and the hamsa causing her already sunken features to tighten on her skull. Fresh strands of ink leaked from her eyes and mouth, retracing old paths.
“At the very least,” Lilith continued, “procuring such a trinket could facilitate another friendly chat between us. Another heart-to-heart to determine whether or not you do still have any value to me, and if I am quite as transparently devious as you proclaim me to be. Kill him, though, and you ensure a sentence served in vain, since we seem to agree I will only begin again. This time without the hassle of your obstruction.”
Isobel burned to move. Thinking on Lilith’s words, she had to wonder why Varen continued to stand idle. Hadn’t Reynolds himself admitted that Varen could turn the dreamworld against him? That he had the ability to change what was happening? So why didn’t he try?
More important, Isobel thought, wavering where she stood . . . why didn’t she?
“While it is truly fascinating,” Lilith said, her crooked smile twisting into a sneer, “how you would all unanimously stake the fates of your souls upon one another in this manner, without even realizing you are doing so, your shared delusion that there is a way out, amusing as it is, tries my patience. We have reached an impasse, and one of you must now make your move so that I may know mine.”
“I could kill him,” Reynolds said, “and still take possession of the charm.”
“No!” Isobel cried, starting forward.
Without looking away from Lilith, Reynolds pressed the blade closer to Varen’s neck, and Isobel halted, sneakers squeaking.
Varen kept his eyes locked on hers, asking her again through that pointed glare to stand down. But why? He couldn’t truly believe Reynolds was telling the truth about taking her home, could he? And even if he did, how could he allow Reynolds to end his life, to enslave him eternally to the demon Isobel had fought so hard to save him from? Hadn’t he believed her when she’d promised him they would find another way?
“You would rather start an unnecessary war between us,” Lilith asked, her voice softening, “one that you know you cannot win, than accept my offer of peace?”
“Can peace be made with a demon?” scoffed Reynolds.
“Oh, Gordon.” Lilith sighed. “Creature of few words that you are, I doubt you would bother to ask if you thought you knew the answer. So I will respond with a question of my own. Can a weak, puerile, lovesick girl offer you better?”
When Reynolds glanced in Isobel’s direction, she sent him an entreating stare.
“Reynolds, please,” Isobel said, her voice small and shaking. “You told me there was a way. If that’s true, if there is a way to free Varen, then there has to be a way for you—”
“Enough,” Reynolds barked, and, hardening his expression, he returned his gaze to Lilith.
Several moments passed in which no one moved. Then . . . click.
The snapping of the hamsa’s chain echoed loudly through the silent foyer when Reynolds jerked his sword forward, freeing the charm from Varen’s neck.
Lilith laughed, her mouth stretching into a too-wide smile as, with one unceremonious shove, Reynolds sent Varen to the floor at the demon’s clawed feet.
Released from her self-inflicted paralysis, Isobel scrambled to Varen’s side and dropped to her knees.
Wrong, she thought as she threw her arms around him, glancing back at Reynolds to catch sight of his captured prize—the hamsa—its chain now hopelessly wrapped about the hilt of his cutlass.
Varen had been wrong to hold off. To ask her to do the same.
She’d been wrong too. Wrong ever to have believed Reynolds again. Wrong not to have acted when she’d had the chance. And wrong, especially, not to have heeded Pinfeathers’s warning about him when the Noc had been right about so much else.
“Predictable, Gordon,” cooed Lilith as she drifted to stand a mere foot from Isobel and Varen, those black eyes turning down on them both, “but a commendable decision, all the same.”
A flash of bright white sparked from overhead. Isobel looked up to see Reynolds raise his arm.
