Because when I looked up, Vagach stood there, and Olrus was slumped at his feet.

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3

My stomach plummeted along with my gaze as I beheld my friend. He moaned in pain, blood dripping from his face. Bile rose in my throat; Vagach had aimed his rage at Olrus when he returned home and found me gone.

“Vagach, I didn’t know you’d be home so soon,” I stammered, unsure what else to say.

He lifted a dark brow and looked pointedly at my hand, then the dress. “And where have you been?”

“Oh, in the garden,” I said, then cursed internally, remembering I had a fresh cut on my finger. I angled myself away so that I could race down the hall and toward a window, where the bushes would save me once again.

His voice sent a chill down my spine. “You have disobeyed my orders by not being ready for me when I arrived home either.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, voice small and weak as every spark of hope I’d had after learning that Vagach was leaving was doused by the iciness in his tone. “I got caught up in the garden, caring for my roses.”

“You haven’t cared for them in a long time. What changed today?” he snarled, stepping closer.

I flinched harder than I meant to and Vagach noted it with a look of disdain. Yet again, he was trying to catch me in a lie, and I’d already fucked up. I switched tactics. “What was all the fuss about this morning? I heard voices drifting from the square.”

“Don’t change the subject,” he snapped, closing the distance between us so he towered over me. I stepped backward, knocking into a crate filled with fruit. “Where were you, really?”

“I just told you I was–”

“Enough!” he shouted, and I winced, my entire body joining the movement as I shrank away from Vagach’s wrath. “You were not among your roses and you were not in the prayer room. You are up to something, Assyria, and I will not leave Stryi until I have answers.”

“You’re leaving?” I questioned, feigning ignorance.

“Not until I am certain you are pregnant,” he snarled, pressing his body against mine. Terror pumped adrenaline through my veins, and without thinking, I shoved at him. Except, one of my hands was not empty, and the knife fisted there sank between his ribs. I sucked in a shocked breath while he grunted, taking a stumbling step back.

“You stabbed me.” He blinked rapidly as if he couldn’t comprehend that I possessed the propensity for violence.

But it was not a killing blow, and that action would not go unpunished. I had to act fast if I wanted to press my advantage. My entire body protested, from fatigue, to my cracked ribs, to my bruised shoulder, as I snatched the crate at my back and flung it at him. Vagach wasn’t expecting the movement, and the wood shattered against him, sending oranges flying in all directions. I leaped over the rolling fruit and raced to the counter, where a row of knives rested, freshly cleaned. But Vagach was fast despite his overindulgence, and he had me pinned against the stone, digging into my stomach and robbing me of breath.

“You’re not going anywhere, and neither am I, Assyria,” he snarled, lifting my skirts and using them to pull me away from the knives. Olrus remained curled on the floor, unable to help me.

“No!” I cried out, grasping for something, anything to protect us both. My fingers brushed against a hard, metallic object, and I snatched it as Vagach continued to maneuver me. With all my strength, I swung it backwards, trying to dislodge him.

My arm reverberated with the impact.

Vagach’s hands loosened of their own accord, and he crumpled to the ground. I whirled, heart leaping into my throat, when I realized what I’d grabbed.

The meat mallet, with a heavy, spiked head.

Blood poured from a caved-in spot on Vagach’s temple. I did not breathe as I waited for a twitch of his lips, the jerk of his head, something, to indicate that he lived.

Had I killed my husband?

I nudged his body with the toe of my boot, and still he did not stir.

Shit, shit, shit.

What was I supposed to do? Vagach was expected to join the army, and besides that, he was a Kormánzó. It wouldn’t be long before he was missed. The way his skull dipped and the knife protruding from his ribs were clear signs of murder. His death was impossible to explain any other way, especially when he’d be burned on a public pyre as a member of one of the Demon noble houses.

Which meant that I would die too—or worse, be sold as a fallen female to some rich or noble male who wanted powerful offspring. My stomach seized at the thought, and bile crept up the back of my throat.

Olrus groaned, long and low, and my dread was forgotten as I raced to the side of my only friend.

“I’m so sorry, this is all my fault,” I sobbed, a hand hovering over his form.

A cardinal eye cracked open, the other too swollen to move, and through tattered, bloody lips, he managed to grit out, “Get the poppy.”

I nodded, then kicked oranges from my path as I raced to the store room and found the vial of milky liquid. Returning to his side, I uncorked it, then brought it to his mouth. “Slowly,” I cautioned, then tipped it. He gulped greedily, and after a few moments, I took it away. He sighed, and I squatted there, unsure how to help him or what to do next. One by one, tears tracked down my cheek and dropped onto the floor, sounding like the hoofbeats that had brought on this situation.

“I won’t die, Syr,” Olrus whispered, his voice so strained that using my full name would have been impossible.

“I won’t let you. I need you.” The words came out like choked sobs because that’s all I could manage as wave after wave of guilt and grief crashed through me. If I hadn’t snuck out…

“Then you likely would be in my position,” Olrus grunted, and only then did I realize I’d spoken my thoughts aloud. The poppy seemed to be offering him a modicum of relief, because with a large groan, the old Demon managed to sit upright.

“Careful,” I breathed, offering him what little strength I could to scoot back against the leg of the dining table.

Sweat beaded his brow. “We need to dispose of his body,” Olrus commented, flicking his attention to Vagach.

I glanced behind me to my deceased husband, eyes glassy and staring out the garden window. Metallic ruby pooled all around him, tainting the spilled oranges. “What am I going to do? My life is over now.” My voice broke over those last words, and I hung my head as if an executioner’s blade already hovered there, accepting my destiny.

“No.” The word slipped out of Olrus with such force that I whipped my head up. “I will say that I killed him.”

“Olrus, I can’t ask you–”

“It’s not up for discussion. You have your whole life ahead of you, while I’ve lived for over twenty seven hundred years. I am ready to move on into the next world.” The pain etched into the lines of his face made him look every bit of his age, and my heart squeezed in the same way it did when I thought of my parents and sister.

Think, Assyria, think.

Olrus and I could try to hide the body, but when the army came to collect him, we were fucked. Unless…

Unless I used my magic—one that no one knew existed.

“The commotion this morning was from officers of the Demon army arriving to conscript one male from every family to join the war effort,” I told Olrus, my mind working over the solution to our problem. “Vagach was going to war.”

Olrus sighed, then winced as he squeezed my hand. “I know you would have been better off if he had gone.”

“That’s not what I am getting at.” I sat on my rear and crossed my legs to face him. “I’ve been keeping a secret from you,” I admitted, twisting my mother’s ring around my finger. Tapping into the well of shadows, I pulled on the threads of my magic until I formed Vagach’s face, all too clear in my mind’s eye from the times I had lain on this very floor, filled with terror as I stared up at his hate-filled garnet eyes.