“Such a shame, really, Van. You having to die, I mean. You were the best of them, tried to help me, but I couldn’t be helped, not by you. Except you taught me that the rules don’t matter if I don’t want them to. A valuable lesson, and one I learned well. This is my one best way to show Josie what she did to me, how she hurt me. I want her to hurt like that, and this is the only way.”
Her fingers slid along his mouth, and Van Gast tried to work up the nerve to say “fuck the bond” and bite her. He saved it though, stored up all his fight, all his little strength. He was going to need it, and not for a display of bravado that no one would see except Ilsa.
“Better than that,” Ilsa whispered. “Much better. Your Josie isn’t the only one with twisty plans in her head, oh no. Maybe you’ll get to see as you die. Won’t that be nice?”
She fixed him with a bright smile and stood, brushed off her dress fastidiously and turned to go. She hesitated with her hand on the door, and the look she gave him was the old Ilsa—timid, unsure, almost heartbreakingly naïve. Where had that woman gone?
“Remember, Van. He can see inside the head of bonded men. My one and only bit of help for you.”
She slipped through the door and he was alone again. He can see inside the head of bonded men. Keep your mind blank, keep it away from everything but breathing. Only he couldn’t. He stared at the moonlight splitting the darkness of his cell like knives. Like Josie, when they’d been in here together. Moonlight and midnight, the two halves of her. Soft and sharp, love and hate. It was worth it, all this, if she was safe. Everything was worth it for that.
The moonlight faded as dawn approached. Something fluttered down the light-well and landed with a whisper in the straw. Something pale and flickering. Van Gast shoved himself away from the wall and went to see. Anything to take his mind from what dawn meant.
A braid, white-blond, with a piece of shell woven in. From the time he and Josie had been marooned for three days on an isolated island and neither too keen to be found. He stared up the light-well, but no shadow crossed it, no one stood and stared down at him.
A whisper came down to him, barely a breath. A taunting boy’s voice. “I still say she’s going to shoot you in the face. If anyone’s going to kill you, it’ll be her. Paid me a whole gold shark to get in here, and no one else could squeeze that gap. A warning, I reckon. A bullet in the face before they get the chance to hang you.”
“Ansen?”
No reply—he’d gone. Van Gast stared down at the braid, remembered the sun on his face on that island, the way they’d got sand in places you really didn’t want sand but hadn’t cared. She was telling him something, but his brain was too exhausted to think properly, too tangled from pain.
She was here, and she shouldn’t be. He squeezed his eyes shut. If she was here, she wasn’t safe, and this had all been for nothing. Then again, if she was here, something stupid was in the offing. Stupid and thrilling and that might just see them dead. She’d come back for him. Had he really doubted she would? Not his Josie—he should have remembered, she never gave up till the bitter end. Too stubborn by half.
He had no time to think more—the door rattled open again and the guards came in. Big gnarly-faced men, scarred from long experience. Too wary of tricks, even if his fuddled brain could have thought of any, or if a trick would be any use now.
Save it, save it up for later. Don’t think about it, or he’ll see it in your head.
Van Gast staggered to his feet, slipped the braid into a pocket of his breeches next to his set of bones and faced the guards. He forced a nonchalant grin. “Ready when you are, sweet cheeks. Do you have to pay your whores extra or do you put a bag over your head?”
Chapter Nineteen
Rillen stood at the top of the steps leading to Oku’s temple, Ilsa resplendent at his side. Something had changed in her, made her come alive, made her smile cold and beautiful and