The Offering (The Pledge 3)

“It can’t be!” she shrieked into the sky. “It can’t be!” I stood back and watched as the queen who was ten times the queen I was threw a tantrum to rival any child’s. “I will have my eternity! I will! I will!” Her face was mottled with rage as she shouted again. “This is your doing, isn’t it? You won’t let me have her.”

I didn’t blink or move, just continued to smile that gloriously victorious smile. I had them right where I wanted them.

Elena’s voice circled the rim of madness when she bellowed, “Bring the other one! Bring her now!”

It wasn’t hard to decipher who she meant, and I felt the floor, which had felt only unsteady a moment before, drop out from under me.

When Eden was dragged in by two of Elena’s henchmen, my jaw tightened, but I managed to keep my face expressionless even as my mind spun in a million different directions.

I thought of Xander’s hand, entombed in a cardboard box, and acid rose in my throat, burning the back of my tongue. “Give me the soul of Sabara,” Elena demanded from between gritted teeth. “Give her to me or I’ll kill your associate here.”

I studied Eden. I could feel the fury coming off her—as I’m sure we all could—thick, like black smoke that burned our lungs and stung our eyes. She was everything I’d ever strived to be—loyal, passionate, tough, and sharp. Her face was still bruised from her fight with Brooklynn, and her jaw was set now in steely resolve. I wondered if she understood precisely what Elena was asking me to do. If she knew that Sabara was looking for a new host.

But she knew enough to level her gaze on me. “Don’t you dare,” she commanded, as if she were the queen and I the guard. “This is a war, Your Majesty. You do this, and she wins. They all win.”

“Shut up,” Elena hissed.

But I knew she meant it. Eden could no more hide the veracity of her conviction than she could the color of her shockingly purple hair.

I also knew she was right. If I gave Elena Sabara’s Essence now, we’d lose. Not just here, today, but the war. There’d be nothing to stop Sabara from killing me and then marching Elena’s forces all the way to the Capitol and taking her place on the throne once more.

She’d have total control over both domains. She’d undo everything I’d worked for—all the freedoms I’d offered the people of Ludania, all the injustices I’d tried to set right.

All I could hope was that Elena was bluffing. That she was simply trying to fool me into giving up Sabara by threatening Eden’s life.

Eden, I could sense, had no such misgivings.

If she had been able to sense my feelings, however, she would have felt torment and despair. Elena might as well have asked me to kill Eden with my own two hands.

When I finally found the strength to speak, my voice was small and pitiful. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing I might very well be issuing Eden’s death sentence by refusing to give up Sabara. I almost couldn’t finish, and then I managed, “I can’t.”

Elena’s lips thinned, pulling into a hard line that left no question as to whether she’d meant her threat or not. She directed her unfeeling gaze to me, and I wanted to shrink away from it, to take back my refusal. But I couldn’t, because that would mean setting Sabara free.

The queen didn’t say anything. She only nodded, but that was enough. That single action was all the order she had to give.

I had to close my eyes when I saw the soldiers push Eden to her knees. She didn’t resist them, and she didn’t try to beg for her life. Around us the air went still and serene as Eden accepted her fate.

And then I heard her, right before the sound of gunfire split the silence: “You’re doing the right thing, Charlie.”

I couldn’t breathe.

My chest was heavy. Crushed with the weight of what I’d done.

I didn’t remember being moved, or when I’d stopped wailing Eden’s name, or when the night had come again. But all of these things had happened, and when at last I finally opened my eyes once more, they were swollen and sore from all the tears I’d wept, and all the ones that were still waiting to come. I vowed never to eat or breathe or love again.

Love was too painful.

Life was too painful.

Air was too painful.

I curled as tightly as I could into a ball on the bed I’d been deposited on, only vaguely noting it wasn’t the one I’d been in the night before. That didn’t matter either.

The only thing that mattered now was that I hadn’t given Sabara or Niko or Elena what they wanted. I no longer cared if I’d done it for the right reasons, or the wrong ones. All I cared was that they were being punished too.

My heart was hard and bitter, and I envisioned a thousand ways to hurt them, to kill them and those they loved. To flog, flay, and torture them in every conceivable way.

I wanted revenge. Pure and simple.

And Eden’s words continued to replay in my head, over and over and over again, You’re doing the right thing. . . . You’re doing the right thing. . . .

I wanted to take solace from her final declaration, but I couldn’t. Not now. Not yet.

She might have been right, but it didn’t matter because she was gone.

Forever.

Eden was gone.

brooklynn She would’ve liked to have more troops, but this was all she had at her disposal. They were a sad excuse for an army—her band of 178 able-bodied soldiers. Plus Aron. He was fine to look at, she supposed, but he had zero experience when it came to things like killing.