Page 64 of Wicked Curses
He held up the dagger. “This is fae metal.”
It took a couple of seconds before she replied. “Of course it is. I wasn’t going to take anything less than the best with me on my hunt for you.”
He realized her fangs had descended when her words were a little slower in coming. “You could have accidentally stabbed me with it when you took him out.”
He waved the dagger at the mark on his chest, directly over his heart. She regained more control over herself as her eyes shifted to him, and some color returned to her face.
“But I didn’t,” she said.
“You could have.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes there are casualties in war. I can accept that.”
The flippant answer, so close to onehewould have given, irritated as much as amused him. “Funny.”
The flash of her smile revealed her lengthened fangs before her attention shifted to Radagast. He lay, bleeding on the floor, with his hands clawing at his chest and his eyes rolling as gurgled sounds issued from his bloody lips.
The dagger could prove lethal to the warlock if he didn’t get a chance to repair his wound. Fae metal to the heart wasn’t an automatic death sentence for other immortals like it was to the fae.
Orin wasn’t going to take the chance that Radagast might heal himself. Belda probably would have preferred if they solved this in the pit, but he didn’t think a pit fight was necessary when Radagast had entered Sahira’s room and tried to kill her.
With the dagger in hand, he planted his foot on Radagast’s chest. The warlock gazed at him from hooded eyes and a face splattered with blood.
When his fingers started to move in the rhythmic dance of a spell casting, Orin kicked his hand aside. “I don’t think so.” To ensure Radagast couldn’t try anything else, he stepped on the bastard’s wrist while grinning at him. “Did you really think you’d succeed in this?”
He must have, as he’d been ballsy enough to return thenight afterOrin interrupted his attempt to kill Sahira. The man had balls as big as mountains, something Orin normally admired, but not today.
He was going to cut off those balls.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
Radagast didn’t reply,and Orin hadn’t expected one. When the warlock tried to bring his free hand to his chest, Orin bent and snapped his wrist.
The blood pooling in his mouth choked Radagast’s scream; it made Orin smile. Holding the dagger before him, he admired the expertly crafted blade as the candle’s flame gleamed on its shiny surface and blood dripped down it.
“It’s a magnificent piece, but I’d expect no less from the fae.”
He bent and went to work carving Radagast’s heart from his chest. While working, he ignored the man’s whimpering cries and hummed a fae folk song.
Radagast’s struggles didn’t last as his eyes rolled back in his head, and Orin broke through his rib cage. When the hole was big enough, he reached in, tore out the warlock’s still-beating heart, and dropped it on his belly.
There would be no coming back from that.
“Shouldn’t we have asked him if anyone else was in on this?” Sahira inquired.
He expected to see revulsion when he looked at her, but his cruelty hadn’t fazed her. Her fangs had retracted to the slightly longer, sharper points of all vampire fangs in their resting state.
Orin bent and wiped the blood from the blade on Radagast’s pants. “Do you think he would have told us the truth?”
“No.”
“Then why waste our time?”
She didn’t answer as her gaze shifted to the hole in the floor. “Now I know how he got through my protection spells. I didn’t realize there was an entrance in themiddleof my room; I only secured the perimeter.”
“I’m curious to know if anyone else is aware of it.”
“I searched this entire room my first night here and never noticed it.”
