Diamond in the Rough - Vivienne Savage Page 0,41

She never said outright that he fathered you, but I always had my suspicions. So, when she asked me to watch over you should anything befall her, I saw an opportunity. And when we buried her, well…” Lacherra pulled the gold medallion from her bodice, the flawless yellow disc throwing gilded light around the room. It shone like the sun itself with a mystical luster Rosalia had never seen in an ordinary coin.

She yearned to be near it. She wanted to touch it. Her soul burned to have one second of contact with the thing that she’d only seen for the briefest of moments shortly after Lacherra assassinated the priest. Time seemed to stand still as she honed in on the fine details, the blazing sun of one side and moon on the other. The coin had no denomination of resemblance to any currency she’d ever seen.

“I took this before they buried your mother. It was quite amusing watching you dig, only to discover nothing more than a molding corpse.”

“Why didn’t you take the stones then if you were there?” Rosalia demanded.

“I have eyes everywhere, and I enjoyed the show,” Lacherra replied.

Which meant that she hadn’t been there herself, only watched through another’s eyes.

“You were never my mother’s friend, were you.” It was less of a question than a quiet statement born of disappointed resignation.

“Once, perhaps, but she thought herself better than us all. So I used her, just as I used you. Had you been pliant, more level-headed, you could have been standing here beside me,” Lacherra continued. “You still could.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Adriano rasped. Lacherra rewarded his defiance with a sharp press of her knife, a second thin line of blood welling against his skin. The thin wisps of his life essence flowed into it in scarlet ribbons, and breath hitched in his chest as his eyes bulged from a pain Rosalia could only imagine. The muscles of his body tightened and the veins in his neck stood taut. Hadrian once told her one nick was enough to inflict excruciating agony upon the recipient, thus designed so that Lacherra could disable her foes without senseless death.

That he remained conscious enough to fight spoke of his endurance.

“Don’t hurt him!”

“Then give me what I want. Give me the stones, and I’ll release your playmate.”

The fighting in the corridor ended abruptly with a final bloodcurdling scream and the sound of a man choking on his own blood. Xavier appeared at the cell door, muscled and overwhelming in a draconic body larger than his sand monitor form, and meters smaller than the magnificent drake that rescued her from the execution wagon. Despite the disparity between his natural size and his current form, he tore the cell door from the hinges with a squeaking, squealing noise of bending metal as if he were shredding thin aluminum instead of reinforced iron.

“Not one step closer,” Lacherra hissed at him, working the tip of the enchanted steel over Adriano’s jugular. One stab. One flick of her wrist or twitch of the fingers, and he’d be gone.

No matter what choice she made, Rosa knew she wouldn’t win. She’d lose a friend, or she’d surrender the opportunity to prevent a great evil. Choosing the life of one man over the wellbeing of many was never easy, even if that someone was someone close to her heart.

Had grown up beside her.

Had once been her lover, and did still love her.

They may not have been meant for one another romantically, but they had a bond of friendship forged through childhood that couldn’t be denied.

I can’t watch her kill him, too.

Wondering how many more friends she would lose, Rosalia narrowed her eyes and observed the delicate line of skin splitting beneath the knife’s razor edge. Hadn’t the fates taken enough from her?

So much death. Hadrian murdered by the wife he’d treasured, Mira burned alive for the sin of being her best friend. Her shoulders shook.

What good was it all if she surrendered?

What did it all matter if she allowed one more person she loved to perish?

Rosalia weighed the options again and again, and no matter what, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she watched Adriano bleed out, and that to make the decision to sacrifice him made her no better than the woman holding a blade to his throat.

Her stomach twisted and churned as she pulled the three Legacies from her bag and clenched them tightly in her hand. Instinct told her Lacherra couldn’t be trusted, but a