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EDEN WAS SUDDENLY WRACKED with a shiver and wondered what had caused it. Her half-brother and the sorceress had left hours ago and she was sitting on her favorite chair, reading a book. She sent her senses out, but she couldn’t feel any danger. No one was approaching their mansion, so she pushed her feelings of unease away.
The succubus had been thinking about the lies she’d been told her whole life. Sorcha and Malachi had been just as thrown as she’d been by the idea that they weren’t as tightly bound as they’d always believed. Their trainer had brainwashed them into thinking their every move was being monitored by the Immortal Triumvirate. Now they knew that wasn’t the case at all, they weren’t sure what to do with the knowledge.
Sorcha had suggested they continue to follow their orders and not to rock the boat. Just because Eden had kissed a vampire didn’t mean they were free to do whatever they wanted. They were assassins and they were expected to kill their marks and to be obedient. It had never occurred to any of them not to execute their targets. It was the sole reason for their existence, after all.
If they chose not to fulfil their missions, the Immortal Triumvirate would know about it. The spell that linked them to their targets would continue to poke and prod at them. It would also notify their leaders that they hadn’t performed their task. Eden had no illusions that their punishment would be anything less than swift and brutal if she was disobedient. Sorcha was right, they had to continue on as if nothing had changed, or they would be the ones to face death.
As she sat on her delicate chair and stared out the window at the lightly falling snow, Eden knew she no longer had a death wish. The tiny rebellious act of defying her rulers’ orders not to let any man touch her had given her a spark of hope. Maybe she wasn’t doomed to a lengthy life of loneliness and despair. Maybe she might even be able to find a way to free herself from their tyranny.
The master vampire whose name she didn’t even know had done more than just rouse her desire. He’d given her hope that her life might change. Madam Quilla had foreseen that Eden would meet a tall, dark and handsome stranger who would sweep her off her feet. He would give her a choice between being good and being evil and the succubus now realized what the seer had meant. The bloodsucker had inadvertently proven that the shackles Eden thought had kept her powerless to change her fate weren’t real. They were just smoke and mirrors.
In the back of her head, the assassin faintly felt the link between herself and her masters. It was now clear that the link didn’t send information about what she was thinking and feeling back to the Immortal Triumvirate. All it did was make her feel like she was their property. She wondered if it had any power over her at all, or if it was all just a sham.
Bitter anger welled inside her that she’d been duped so badly. The unholy trio had used and abused her and had treated her like their plaything. They ordered her to kill and had turned her into a murderer. While she was efficient at killing her targets, it wasn’t something she enjoyed doing. She craved the energy she stole from living beings, but she was only half-succubus. Her other half could get along just fine without feeding from people. But her fairy half had been suppressed since birth and that part of her magic was locked away inside her.
Holding her hand out, Eden concentrated hard. She’d been forbidden from using her one and only spell unless she was on a mission. After a few seconds, she conjured up a weak flame. It burned for a few moments before it was extinguished. She waited for a letter to arrive to summon her to face the wrath of her overlords, but nothing happened. Just as she’d thought, they had no idea that she’d just disobeyed their orders.
Lord Dallinar had hobbled Eden’s ability to use her innate magic. Calling up the trickle of flame was all she’d ever been able to manage. Like Sorcha and Malachi, she would never be able to realize her full potential. The fairy lord, master vampire and alpha werewolf were supposed to be all-powerful, but they were just cowards. They were afraid of anyone who possessed power and either hobbled them, or had them killed.
“They’re afraid of us,” Eden whispered in realization. Why else would they have dampened their assassins’ magic? Even Malachi’s fairy magic had been suppressed. All he could call on was his incubus magic to seduce his female marks and drain their lives away.
A dangerous idea sprang into the succubus’ mind and she found she couldn’t shake it. She’d always felt like a powerless pawn. She’d been too young and weak to stand up for herself and to say no to her lords and masters when they’d forced her to sleep with them. They’d stolen her innocence and her chance of a normal life. But it seemed their hold over her wasn’t as solid as she’d believed. What if she could break that hold completely?
Eden still held her book, but she was no longer seeing it. Instead, she was seeing the fragile hope of freedom blossoming inside her. She couldn’t tell Sorcha or Malachi about her plan. If she failed, she didn’t want either of them to be punished along with her. This was something she was going to have to do on her own. If she succeeded, she would approach them both and tell them about what she’d done. Maybe she could free them all from their wretched existence.
A tentative plan was forming inside her mind, but it was just a bare outline for now. She was going to have to do some research before she could act. Trusting anyone other than her fellow assassins wasn’t going to be easy. The seer had told her that she could continue to live her life as it was, or she could trust someone who should be her enemy. It would be dangerous and it could end with her death, but it could also give her the freedom she craved.
Eden was highly skeptical about the last part the fortune teller had said about her having an important destiny, but she understood the part about it being up to her whether she would choose to be good, or evil. If her desperate scheme came to fruition, she might get to make her choice after all.
It was clear to her that she needed to find a magic user who was strong enough to sever the bond she had with the Immortal Triumvirate. The hard part would to be find someone who she could trust to do the deed.
