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“I’m ready to die.”
“Perhaps,” I conceded. I swallowed down more of the vodka from my teacup and tried to look as unbothered as Morales at the prospect of facing our imminent death. “But are you ready to kill?”
“No,” repeated the councillor before Xio could answer. “Or he’d have done it already.”
“I was waiting for the king,” he muttered, scowling down at the table. “You’re only a consolation prize, Nathanael Aratorre.”
“Thanks,” I said in the driest voice I could muster.
His head shot up. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t kill you!”
More defensiveness, when the best argument in support of his protests would have been to crush the vials in his hand and let their combined chemistry kill all three of us.
I carelessly tossed the empty teacup back onto its saucer and we all watched it wobble around on its edge with a loud rattle. “Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we, Xio? You deliberately gave my herald an unimportant plea so by the time you were called to approach the king, the hall would be nearly empty. You didn’t blow us all up when I told the crowd to leave.”
I didn’t hold the confidence that I hoped my words conveyed. There was at least one future in which Xio killed me…or had that possibility already been erased by what I’d done so far? I didn’t know. The Sight was confusing at the best of times.
“I expect that if Morales and I were to get up and walk away right now,” I continued, “you still couldn’t do it, so stop pretending to be a killer when we all know what you are.”
Xio drew in a shuddering breath, his chin dropping to his chest. He looked like a broken man.
“A failure,” he sobbed.
“No,” I said. “A decent fucking person.”
“Take your hand from your pocket,” Morales murmured. Soft, but firm, a voice for the man to obey when everything else was crumbling to pieces around him.
He gave another hiccoughing sob and slipped his hand free.
Morales was on him in an instant, yanking Xio’s arms behind his back to keep them away from the vials that could trigger a spark. He didn’t struggle; not as she ground his face against the table tokeep him still, not as the two guards she called into the hall with a sharp command wrenched the coat and deadly netting free from his body. Not even as they shackled his wrists and began to drag him away.
“Wait,” I said. They did.
“Who sent you here?” I asked. “Who made you believe your life is worth nothing more than someone else’s death?”
Xio stared at me, tears running silently down his cheeks, and didn’t answer. He looked frail without his bulky coat; powerless and lost.
“Please,” I begged. “Who wants my husband dead?”
“If you don’t speak to the king consort,” Morales snapped, her tone sharp, “you’ll be confessing to his Comandante soon enough. Talking now will be much less painful for you.”
Xio just closed his eyes.
When, on a nod from the councillor, the guards returned to hauling the man from the room, this time I didn’t stop them.
*
Chapter Ten
“Fuck,” I snarled, feeling the need to hit something. “Fuck!”
“More vodka?”
I looked at the proffered teapot and narrowed my eyes at Morales.
“Nyet. Stop trying to get me drunk. You already poured me a whole fucking cup of it.”
She shrugged. “You drank it.”
