“I wanted you to take my emotions away, not make me your wife.”

“But I’ve been a good husband. I told you how to find the Vanished Market, I gave you that Fated map.”

“You also threatened to kill me! And you nearly did!” Tella panted as she finally ripped her wrists free from his icy hands. She would have tried to hit him again, but she needed to stop touching him.

She pulled herself from him, then she shoved up from the ground until she towered over him. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. He just looked up at her as if he were a misbehaving angel with gold hair hanging across his pale forehead.

“I want you to undo it,” she demanded. “I want the marriage revoked, and then I never want to see you again.”

“Why would I agree to that?” he droned. “There’s nothing really in this solution for me.”

“You want to be married to someone that hates you?”

“Maybe I like the intensity of it.” He grinned at her as he pushed up from the floor, leaving the chair lying between them.

Tella could barely breathe she was so furious. She would have walked out if she could have. But this marriage wasn’t something she could ignore or pretend away. Even now she could feel it in the way she hated him. Fiery and all-consuming, so much stronger now that he was standing in front of her like her own personal villain.

“If you don’t undo this, I swear I will kill you.” She stepped over the chair, until they were so close she had to crane her neck to look up at his sharp face. “If I remain your wife, I promise that I will make you fall in love with me. I will become everything you’ve ever wanted, and the moment you are mortal, I’ll stab the closest sharp object through your chest and end your heartbeat once and for all.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Jacks sighed. “If you want out of the marriage, there’s a simpler way to do it.”

He reached in his boot and pulled out a dagger.

Tella scrambled back, nearly tripping on the fallen chair.

“Don’t worry, my love, it’s for you to use on me.” He flipped the dagger in his hand and held the hilt toward her. “Immortal matrimony cannot be undone with signatures and pieces of paper. To sever our connection, you have to wound me.”

“And doing that will undo the marriage?”

“‘Undoing’ implies it never happened.” Jacks’s voice switched from sharp to dull in a flash. “What’s done cannot be undone, but it can be severed. All you have to do is use the knife and say the words: Tersyd atai es detarum.” He stepped over the chair until the space between them was gone once again.

Tella cautiously accepted the blade. It was the same jeweled dagger they’d used the night he’d taken her emotions, when he’d also married her. She slowly tipped it toward Jacks’s throat.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even appear to breathe, though his lips remained parted as he looked her directly in the eyes, his gaze the saddest shade of blue she’d ever seen. She didn’t believe it was real. And yet, the look on his face was so convincing, it made her wonder just enough to hesitate.

“Should I make this easier for you?” He spread his shirt apart, baring his chest of smooth, sculpted skin, like marble with a heartbeat. She could hear the rapid pulse of it as it moved in tandem with hers, pounding harder with every breath she took. When they first met, his heart hadn’t beat at all. Then it started again—because of her.

She gripped the dagger tighter, but didn’t make another move.

“Why are you hesitating, my love?”

“Why are you making this so easy?”

“You think this is easy for me?” Jacks leaned forward until his skin pressed against the blade. For once he didn’t smell like apples. He smelled like liquor and heartache, and when he spoke, his words were almost too soft to hear. “You think it’s in my nature to be kind?”

“There’s nothing kind about what you did to me.”

“You’re right,” he whispered. “What I did was purely selfish. So stab me before I decide to be selfish again. The longer we’re bound together, the more difficult it will be for you to fight it. You might hate me, but you’ll find yourself wanting and needing to be near me. So if you really wish to end this, do it now. Cut me and sever everything that ties us together.”

Sweat slicked the jeweled hilt in Tella’s hands. She wanted to do this. She wanted to slash him and be done. But something about the words sever everything that ties us gave her pause.

Maybe he’d known all along that as soon as she found out they were married she’d come here demanding that he end it. Maybe that’s why he was giving in so easily, because that’s what he actually wanted—to sever everything that tied them together. She was supposed to be his true love. She was the one who made his heart beat again—which meant she was also his greatest weakness.

“If I do this, if I sever our connection, will I still be your true love?”

“Why would you care?” Jacks’s lips thinned as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her, but the look in his eyes said he wanted to devour her. “I imagine after today you won’t be kissing me again.”

“Just answer the question, Jacks.”

In a flash, he wrapped his cool hand around her shaking one and dragged the dagger lower, creating a line of pink skin as he moved it to the center of his chest. “I don’t know if you’re my true love, Donatella. All I know is that I want you to be.”

His hands left the dagger and slid around her waist. For a moment she couldn’t move. His fingers were colder than they had ever been, creating chills that went deep beneath her skin.

“I know what I did was wrong. But if you’re looking for a sad story where I justify what I’ve done, you’re not going to find it. I’m the villain, even in my own story. But you were supposed to play a different role.” Misery filled his eyes. “You were supposed to be my true love. You were supposed to want me, not him. You were supposed to be as obsessed with me as I am with you.” He gripped her even tighter, the dagger threatening to pierce his skin, as he leaned his cool forehead against hers.

“If you’re holding back from ending this because you think I’ll kill you or hurt you once our connection is severed, that thought could not be further from the truth. When I told Legend I’d kill you if he didn’t give me the power I needed, I didn’t mean it—I wouldn’t have done it. A part of me even hoped he’d say no, so that you would walk away from him and choose me. I’m selfish, and I want you, but I would never harm you.”

“You already have,” Tella said. And then she slashed his chest with the dagger.

45

Donatella

It was only supposed to hurt him, but Tella doubled over in agony as the knife pierced Jacks’s skin and she said the words to free herself. Her ribs and heart were suddenly on fire. She couldn’t breathe. It felt as if someone had ripped into her chest and taken something vital.

Her vision blurred, and when it finally returned, the entire card room was out of focus, except for Jacks. For the rest of her life, whenever she thought about heartbreak, she would see the way he looked at her. His arms had fallen away from her. His face was twisted in pain. Bloodred tears leaked from his eyes. But he wasn’t clutching his open wound, or doing anything to stop the blood traveling down his chest and puddling on the floor.

Tella knew she’d made the right choice, but it didn’t feel at all as she’d expected.

“Why are you still here?” He fell back onto a chair, still letting the blood from his chest drip everywhere. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was deeper than she’d intended. Tella didn’t like the idea of killing him, even if it was temporary.

“You should do something about that.” She stepped toward him, ready to stop the flow herself.

“Don’t.” Jacks shoved out a shaky hand, the look in his eyes now cold as frost and curses. “You should leave. You got what you wanted.”

But Tella was no longer sure what she’d just gotten.

She should have felt triumphant. She’d never wanted to be connected to Jacks. And yet her legs shook with every step she took away from Jacks and his house.

For a split second, it was tempting to go back and undo what she’d just done. She had, without realizing it, felt just a little bit less alone when they’d been connected. But he wasn’t the person she wanted to be connected to.

A tremor racked her body and something like a cramp tore at her stomach. There was an emptiness inside that she’d never felt before.

With every house Tella passed she pictured the people sleeping inside. She imagined husbands and wives huddled close. She saw sisters sharing rooms, and boys with dogs at the foot of their beds.

But Tella didn’t have a dog.