Chapter 42: Mind control

The words hung in the perfumed air. You're going to help me kill him.

My stomach heaved. The beautiful, fragile sister I had protected my whole life was gone, replaced by this cold creature holding a bloody dagger.

"Never," I breathed, backing away toward the heavy oak door. "I am going to the council chamber. I will tell the Highguard what you are. We will surrender you to the Warlord before the sun sets, and we will save this city."

Hera laughed.

"My sweet, naive Sylvania. You still think you have a choice."

I lunged for the door handle. Before my fingers grazed the brass, Hera flicked her wrist. A wave of unseen force slammed into me, throwing me backward. I crashed into a heavy wooden shelf filled with clay scrolls, collapsing to the floor in a shower of dust and shattered pottery.

Gasps of pain racked my body, but when I tried to stand, I couldn't. It felt as though invisible, freezing chains were wrapped around my ankles and wrists, pinning me to the cold stone.

Hera prowled toward me, the silk of her gown whispering over the debris. She loomed over me, twirling the obsidian dagger.

"You were always so dutiful," she sneered, nudging my paralyzed hand with her slippered foot. "So ready to sacrifice yourself for the Citadel. But you wouldn't sacrifice for me. You'd give me to that beast without a second thought."

"He is right about you," I choked out, straining against the magical bonds. "You’ve changed."

"I am ambitious, yes," she corrected fiercely, kneeling beside me so our faces were inches apart. Her eyes, so like mine, were now dark orbs. "And that warlord is the only thing standing in my way. He is a hybrid abomination, Sylvania. Half-man, half-god, and entirely too powerful. His very existence is a counterweight to the ascension I seek. As long as he breathes, I cannot fully claim the power I have cultivated."

She grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back, forcing me to look at the ceiling.

"And of course," she whispered venomously into my ear, "fate, in its infinite cruelty, bound his soul to yours. The dutiful princess gets the demigod warrior, and the brilliant scholar gets... leftovers. It’s sickening."

"He will destroy you," I spat defiantly. "His army will breach the walls at sunset."

"No," Hera murmured, bringing the bloody tip of the dagger to my throat. I felt the sting as it broke the skin. "Because you are going to walk out those gates. You are going to tell him you have come to surrender yourself in my stead, as a hostage for peace. You will use that sickening pull between you to lure him close, to make him lower his guard."

She pressed harder with the blade. A warm trickle of blood slid down my neck.

"And when he embraces you—and he will, the fool is starved for you—you will use this dagger to carve out his heart."

"I won't do it," I sobbed, tears of rage and terror blurring my vision. "Kill me now."

Remember who you are, a tiny voice screamed in the back of my mind—the voice of Sylvania, the modern girl drowning in this ancient tragedy. Don't let her win.

But Hera just smiled. She took the blood on her thumb—my blood from the dagger’s tip—and pressed it against my forehead, murmuring words in a language that made the shadows in the room writhe.

A searing pain ripped through my skull. It felt like a hot iron branding my brain. My will—my stubborn, princessly duty, my very self—began to fracture.

"It’s not a request, sister," Hera’s voice echoed, sounding like it was coming from inside my own head. "It’s a compulsion. You are mine now. My puppet. You will walk where I tell you to walk. You will say what I tell you to say. And you will kill the only man your soul has ever recognized."

The darkness rose up to meet me, but it wasn't unconsciousness. It was subjugation.

The sun was bleeding into the western horizon, painting the white stones of the Citadel in hues of violent orange and blood red.

I stood before the massive bronze inner gates of the city. I felt detached, as if I were floating above my own body, watching a stranger perform a play.

I was dressed in white. The heavy amethyst silks were gone, replaced by a gown that clung to my frame. My hair was unbound, flowing loose in the hot evening wind.

I looked as defenseless as I felt.

But hidden beneath the folds of the sheer fabric, strapped tight against my thigh, felt the cold, hard weight of the obsidian dagger.

Hera’s compulsion was a vise around my mind. I couldn't stop my legs from moving when the heavy gears began to turn and the massive gates groaned open.

The Citadel was silent behind me. The soldiers on the battlements watched, grim-faced, as their princess walked out to meet the barbarian horde alone.

Vesper was waiting fifty yards out, sitting atop a massive black warhorse. The dying sun set the bronze of his skin and the scars on his arms aflame. His army stood behind him in dead silence, a sea of armour and leather.

When he saw me emerge from the shadows of the gate passage, his posture shifted. He leaned forward in the saddle, his green eyes narrowing.

I continued to walk, the sand of the battlefield slipping into my sandals. Every step was a scream inside my own head. Run away. Turn back. Warn him.

But my body kept walking, controlled by the puppet master back in the palace tower.

I stopped ten feet from his horse. I looked up at him, fighting the tears that threatened to spill over, knowing they would look like fear instead of the devastating betrayal they were.

"Warlord," my voice was clear, steady, not my own. "I have come to parlay."

Vesper swung down from his horse with fluid grace. He landed softly in the sand and stalked toward me. He stopped just inches away, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that the magnetic pull between our souls roared to life, drowning out the sounds of the wind and the distant army.

His gaze searched my face, intense and hungry and confusingly tender. He reached out, his calloused hand cupping my cheek. His touch set my skin ablaze. It made me want to lean into him, to beg him to save me from my own sister.

"Where is the witch?" he murmured, his thumb brushing away a tear that escaped my control.

My hand, moving of its own accord, slid beneath the folds of my white dress. My fingers closed around the hilt of the dagger.

"She is not coming," I whispered, my heart breaking into a thousand pieces as I looked into the eyes of the man I was about to murder. "I am all you get."