Chapter 81: Kin 2
SÉVERINE
"She didn’t tell you?" I let a beat of false sympathy pass over my face. "Given what I have just told you, you understand his enmity with Beaumont, right? You understand why he married her. But even after all of that... Margaux..." I tilted my head. "Well, what I mean to say is... Does that seem like someone who wants to be saved?"
My words hit me hard. His eyes didn’t focus anyway as he kept murmuring to himself and trying to make sense of it.
The one thing I did get clearly from him was;
"...She always felt guilty for what happened to them."
Then his voice went quiet. I wondered where he was at now. If I had him right where I wanted him or if there was still a need to push him further towards the brink.
The rush of bot knowing which moved to make moved through me all the way to the tips of my fingers.
"Well." I straightened. "Before I leave you to sink in whatever this is." It was then he looked at me and I made sure to hold his gaze. "What do you say? Will you hold my hand? I want Étienne. He is the only thing I want. You can have Margaux which I am sure you would like. I have plans to make it happen, if you will hold my hand of course."
He looked at me for a long time.
"No matter what the hell is happening here, I do not know what your angle is in any of this." His eyes moved over my face with a carefulness that told me he was sharper than I had initially given him credit for. "So no. I have a feeling you are a dangerous individual. You claim to love this Étienne, or Theodore, or whatever his name is, yet you sold him out to me just now without hesitation because you... Wanted me to hold your hand."
The sting of it was real.
I let myself feel it for exactly one second, and then I let it go.
I laughed instead, soft and unhurried.
"Because I have the means to keep you in check." I watched his face. "If you think I would let you endanger the man I love with whatever you are thinking right now, you are so very wrong."
I moved my hand.
The unseen hands came immediately, curling around him and yanking him forward before he had time to react. His shout cut off as invisible hands clamped over his mouth and I dragged him to the bars, close enough that his knuckles whitened against the platinum and his eyes were wide and furious above the hand covering his lips.
I touched his face and then turned to my familiar.
"The only thing on my mind right now is a memory stitch. But I have a feeling that is not the right tool to use here considering what I need him for," I said. "Do you have any ideas of anything better?"
"No," his blue eyes were fierce as it said it. "I am not your grimoire."
"Don’t be a sulky bitch. Help me. Or would you rather I implicate Étienne and us both?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"We could kill him and be done with it. That is your answer to every fucking thing."
"You are only this way with me because I marked him. Would killing him even make sense?" I laughed despite myself. "And my grandfather would burn me alive if there is one more dead body other than the Omega I promised would be the end of it. You know that."
A long sigh came from him. He was frustrated. But I knew this creature. It career about me. A lot. It would bend the knee.
"You have already branded him and you might not know this. But... the brand of sacrifice is enough," he said. "There are limits and conditions you have to meet, touch being the most important one of them. But you have that now. Just order him."
I looked into the Beta’s eyes. The fury in them had not left, but underneath it was something else. Something that knew, on some cellular level, that whatever had just happened to him was not a thing he could fight with his hands.
"Speak no evil about me," I said quietly. "Speak no evil about Étienne. Speak no evil about Theodore. Do any of those things and you die." I held his gaze. "Think about it carefully... What I have to offer. Your life and everything you want is entirely in your own hands now."
His eyes went pitch black in response to my order.
The color of it was absolute, like looking into something with no bottom.
It was... beautiful.
"Of course," he said. His voice came out even and distant.
I then let him go.
The unseen hands withdrew in response too. He stepped back from the bars and the black drained out of his eyes slowly, leaving the normal dark irises behind, and he looked at me with the unsteady focus of someone resurfacing from deep water.
"You are a witch."
"I am," I confessed. "Not that there is much you can do about. Sing... Sign or even write about any of it and you will meet your goddess in the afterlife."
"I have to see what you are talking about myself," he said. "About Étienne and Margaux."
"Well, do that." I stepped back. "I on the other hand will be on my way."
I turned and walked.
I listened to my own footsteps in the corridor and did not look back.
My familiar rematerialized at my shoulder as a snake.
I lifted my hand and looked at it. The rose diamond sat quiet and lovely on my finger. But that wasn’t what I was looking at.
"Why did you never tell me the brand of sacrifice could do that?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Because I didn’t want to see that look in your eyes. The one you have now." His voice was low, and what lived underneath it was something I did not entirely want to name. "It worries me sometimes. I wish you had studied under a mortal teacher. Someone who would have done you plenty of good instead of me."
I did not answer him.
My mind had already moved somewhere else. It wandered to Étienne without my permission, the way it always did when I was tired or satisfied or both at once. I thought about his face. I thought about the way he looked at me when he forgot he was supposed to be guarded.
And then the thought arrived, the one I had not invited.
Whether I could ever use this on him if I willed.
I stopped it before it finished forming. I killed it at the root, and I did it fast, because I knew myself well enough to know that thoughts like that needed to be ended before they became comfortable.
I would never.
Not Étienne. Not ever.
I loved him too much to do that. To touch his autonomy which was fucking sacred. His will was the thing I wanted most to have directed at me freely, and I knew with the kind of certainty that did not need examination that to take it from him would be to hollow out the very thing I was trying to keep.
I would never.