tomorrow with a clear head, with a smirk to piss Rillen off. Maybe more than that, because he had a little something in mind, just to liven things up a bit. If he was going to go, he was doing it in style. No one would forget Van Gast, the greatest rack on the western coast, the rack, the one they all wanted to beat. No one would forget him, or his death, or what it meant. He grinned into the dark. Maybe not the best way to go, but pretty damned good.
The outer door along the corridor creaked open, but Van Gast paid it little mind. He’d had his visit from the guards today, had the lash marks to prove it. He only tore his gaze away from the light-well when his cell door opened.
Ilsa looked very fine, all decked out in silk and jewels. An emerald clip set off the chestnut color of her hair that flowed over smooth, copper-bronze shoulders, over a dress women might have killed for. Her perfume filled the cell, a subtle waft that seemed to reach into every dank crevice. Yet it was her face that struck him most—no longer afraid, no longer unsure, or innocent or full of doubt about who she was. It was the face of a woman who knows what she is, and has come to terms with it, revels in it.
“You’re looking well,” Van Gast said. “But I don’t think it was the sea air gave your face that flush. Excuse me if I don’t get up, but I only stand for ladies.”
Her mouth smiled, a lush, full thing that held the promise of nights just as verdant, but her eyes narrowed. She said nothing for a long while, only studied him with interest.
When she finally spoke, it wasn’t what he’d expected. “You could have stopped all this before it began. I could have got her the way she got me, by taking her man. You knew I wanted to, didn’t you? You could have stopped it all.”
“How? By tumbling my friend’s wife? I may be a rack, but I do have standards. Sort of.”
She moved closer, and even the way she moved had changed. Smooth, graceful, full of a threat that was yet feminine and delicate.
“You could have done. Maybe I wish you had, because then…yet I should thank you. If you’d tumbled me, I wouldn’t have come still looking to hurt Josie. Through you, I knew that was the best way. As she hurt me through my man. Only—only he’s not mine, I see that now, and I’m not his. We were told to be together, bonded to each other without choice. He was my jailor, my keeper. With him, I had to be who he expected, not who I was. And I knew…I knew it as soon as I was free of the bond, as soon as I could think for myself. I wasn’t the woman he thought, not the woman he wanted, or needed. And he didn’t even love that woman, he only thought he did, thought he must. We lost the bonds, Van, but I lost who I was too. Now I know. I’ve found out who I was always meant to be, that the bond kept inside me.”
“What, a backstabbing bitch?”
She laughed, and it sounded genuinely amused. “Yes, if you like. Like Josie. I hated her, and I wanted to be like her, too, because Holden loved her once, maybe still does. Rillen is my Van Gast, you see? You admire her twisting mind—I see someone ruthless enough to do anything to get what she wants, no matter who she hurts in the process. She’s away and free, and you’re locked up here, and you even chose it. So stupid. It’s all a matter of perspective, don’t you think?”
“I think you’re an evil-minded bitch, but I quite like that in a woman. As long as they aren’t being bitches to me. I’ve never been so keen on that. Or dying.”
She trailed a soft hand over his cheek, ran it around an eye with a touch as soft as clouds. He tried to pull away, but a burst of pain stopped him, robbed him of breath.
Her smile was seductive, her eyes half-closed. Enjoying it, his pain. “Bissan is outside. You’ll do what I want. Won’t you?”
Van Gast couldn’t say anything past the burn in his head, in his heart where his little-magics exploded like fireworks. It was all he could do to stay