Now both guards turned to watch Ferion, while Linwe regarded her with a troubled, baffled expression. Bel could tell that the younger Elf sensed that something was seriously wrong.

Linwe said brightly, “Graydon, it’s great to see you! You should have said you were stopping by.”

Bel bit back a smile as Linwe rushed over to throw her arms around Graydon. Smiling, he hugged her back. “Like Bel said, it was an impulse visit.”

“Step out of the room,” Ferion said to the guards. As Linwe gave him an uncertain look, he added, “You too.”

Linwe looked to Bel for confirmation. In that moment, any hint of doubt Bel might have had about the younger woman vanished. Linwe was clearly on her side.

Bel told her, “Go on, do as you’re told. Have a good night.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The three Elves left the room, although Linwe trailed behind the two guards and looked distinctly unhappy about it.

As soon as they had left, Ferion turned to confront Bel and Graydon.

He demanded, “What the hell are you two doing?”

THIRTEEN

S

he couldn’t hold back asking any longer. “Who is asking, you or Malphas?”

When at first he didn’t answer, her widened gaze flew to Graydon’s in alarm.

Even as Graydon started to speak, Ferion said, “Your question is not quite accurate. Malphas can’t possess me like some bodiless demon.”

Graydon’s eyes narrowed. “But he can give you orders and compel you to obey. Is he compelling you right now?”

“He’s always had that ability.” The blood had left Ferion’s face, and his lips were white.

“That isn’t an answer.” Bel stepped toward him, her fists clenched.

Ferion didn’t respond. Instead, he looked at her steadily.

All of a sudden, she saw her son again in his gaze, her good, loving, flawed son. Her eyes filled with moisture, and she strode over to throw her arms around him. He held her tightly.

Graydon asked, “Has Malphas compelled you to do things in the past?”

The muscles in Ferion’s arms grew rigid. He put his face in her hair and didn’t answer.

After suspecting for so long, both relief and fury swept through her. She said over her shoulder to Graydon, “Silence is its own answer.”

“Yes, it is,” Graydon growled. “So he has already broken the bargain, and it’s up to us to prove it and hold him accountable.”

Her breathing had turned ragged with her emotions. This was the kind of risk one suffered when one bargained with a pariah. For law-abiding Djinn, if a bargain was not upheld, one could present a case to the Demonkind council. If the case was proven, the Djinn would need to make reparation.

No such strictures bound a pariah. They had already been judged by the Djinn and found wanting, and had been barred from society. The only way to stir others to action was by proving that the pariah was doing too much damage to tolerate – because going against a Djinn came at such a high cost.

Everything was stacked in Malphas’s favor. He could cheat while knowing the cost to hold him accountable was too expensive, whereas if she and Graydon broke their side of the bargain, he would…

What would he do? Tell the world that they had slept together two hundred years ago? Other than a mild titillation and perhaps a tabloid headline, the world would yawn in his face.

Would he kill the High Lord of the Elven demesne? If he did, he would be signing his own death warrant, because nobody – nobody in all the Elder Races – would allow him to commit such a crime and get away with it.

But if he was pushed into a corner, he could torture Ferion with more extreme acts of control – and that was the one possibility that was so unendurable. She simply couldn’t bear to watch it happen.

Hold steady, she thought. Stay the course. Play the long game.

“Ferion,” Graydon said. “What if Malphas ordered you to hurt Beluviel?”

Ferion’s arms loosened from around her, and he stepped back. His expression turned tender and trapped at once. He whispered, “I would do everything in my power to fight it.”

“Yet, you can’t swear for certain that you wouldn’t do it. Just like the first time.”

The first time, when he had choked Bel because Malphas had ordered him to. Silence again, weighted and toxic with everything left unsaid.

Ferion turned away. “I would have to fight anyone who tried to stop me from doing what I was ordered to do, but then I’m sure you remember that. It doesn’t mean I would have to win. I can always be killed.”

“Don’t say that,” she said between her teeth.

When he glanced at her, the frozen, tight lines of his face softened.

He said, “I’ve been living for two hundred years as both hostage and slave, all because I couldn’t control myself when I really needed to. It doesn’t matter if I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter if I grew up a hell of a lot and learned my lesson, or if I would die before I ever did it again. Every time I think this situation can’t go on or get any worse, somehow it does. So far Malphas hasn’t forced me to do anything catastrophic. It’s been the small things, the mean, sneaky things that keep me from sleeping and eat at my soul.”

“You never said anything,” she murmured, stricken.

His gaze turned wry. “What could I have said? Anything would have made you feel worse, more trapped. I love you too much to put you through that. But now that I’ve become the High Lord, and the Elven demesne has stabilized, we all know the situation has changed.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Graydon asked.

Ferion’s reply was immediate. “I take responsibility. Because of my addiction, people have been hurt, and I would pay any price to bring this hell to an end. So I want you both to do what you have to do to end this, and I will have no choice but to do what I must. And I want you to know that whatever happens, you have my blessing.”