Page 375 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

Gone were the fine clothes and tailored suits. Adrastos now wore tattered denim, the shredded remnants of a bloody shirt twisted into a makeshift tourniquet. The rest lay balled in a corner.

“So. If you’ve run this scene as many times as I have, then you know it only ends one of two ways.”

“Three.”

Adrastos sucked in a breath. “Ah. So you’re passing another Hail Mary.”

“They’ve worked in the past.”

“Not against Moros.”

“No,” I conceded. “Not against Moros. But I’ve beaten two of his brothers. So I’d say my odds are pretty decent.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Alvara.”

“Him? Not us? Not the cause?”

“Not this time.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to untangle the threads of his logic. “You’re off-script, Balaskas.”

“Since we’re being honest,” he drawled, “I loathe that name.”

“It’s your name.”

“It’s his name. And I was shown long ago how little it meant. I’ve no interest in claiming it.”

He leaned back, new scars slicing through the ink across his chest and abdomen. I studied him carefully, resisting the pull of my foresight, trying to piece together this puzzle with nothing but the present.

“Except when it came to the book,” I said.

A lupine grin stretched across his face. “I was wondering how long you’d resist that particular lure.”

“Will it get them home?”

“Not us?”

“Not this time. You know that as well as I do.”

“Resigned to losing, Princess?”

I smirked, sliding my dagger from its sheath and wiping the blade across my jeans. “Far from it. And you know that, too.”

“Arrogant.”

“Calculated.”

Adrastos cleared his throat, casually crossing an ankle over his knee with a nonchalance that mocked the chains binding him to the bed.

“You don’t walk away from this,” he said flatly.

It was true. There were still no paths where I walked away, and August remained free. It was one or both of us. And I’d already made up my mind which it would be.

“But Aren might,” I clarified. “And August will.”

“So you sacrifice their queen?”

“So he can take yours.”