Free Cruel Enchantment by Anya Bast

protective gesture. “I know you loved Aileen more than anything. I know her death destroyed you.” She stopped and swallowed hard, wincing from pain. “Please believe I didn’t kill her out of jealousy. It was an accident that I killed her at all. I didn’t mean to do it.” She whispered the last sentence, lowering her gaze to the floor.
    Aeric wanted to cast away the seed of doubt that she might be telling the truth. He couldn’t. If she was lying, she deserved an Oscar.
    She looked up at him. “You’re a good man, Aeric.”
    His fists clenched. “I am not. Stop saying that.”
    “You’re not going to kill me.”
    Silence. Aeric turned his face away from her.
    “Yes, you may have fantasized about it, but when it comes to reality, you won’t do it. You can’t. You don’t have it in you.”
    “Unlike you,” he snarled at her, making her jump and press herself backward.
    “Unlike me,” she said quietly. “You’re right.”
    When he didn’t respond, she asked, “If you’re not going to kill me, will you let me go?”
    “No.”
    “What are you going to do with me?”
    “You’re staying here.”
    The words went unspoken but still hung in the air between them— but I won’t hurt you .
    Optimism flickered over her face and he hated himself. He was betraying Aileen by keeping her murderer alive and giving her hope.
     
     
    HER throat burned.
    She’d thought that had been the end. The look in his eyes and on his face had been so brutal and all consuming. Now she had a sliver of possibility to work with. Perhaps she could leverage it to her advantage. Manipulate this turn of events in her favor.
    Leverage. Manipulate .
    Sweet Danu , she was beginning to think like the woman she’d been so long ago. She was slipping into old patterns of behavior to survive, small subconscious seeds that triggered in situations when she was in danger. Behavior she’d learned as a child and young adult in order to make it through, to survive, to put food in her belly. With the help of Lars, the Summer Queen had taken all that and used it against her, molded her into a tool to have at her disposal. Forged her into a weapon, just as Aeric did every night.
    No, she never wanted to go back to being that woman, that weapon .
    She watched Aeric turn his head away from her, grief overcoming his features. If only a man would grieve for her that way—love her so much that even hundreds of years after her death he still mourned her.
    Aileen didn’t deserve it. Emmaline hadn’t known then, not until that fateful night, that Aileen hadn’t deserved Aeric at all.
    “I can’t let you go,” Aeric ground out in a low, harsh voice, “because I can’t let you go back to the Summer Queen.”
    “The Christians’ hell would freeze over before I would go back to her.” The angry vehemence in her voice surprised her. Emotion flared through her veins and burned behind her eyes. She took a deep, calming breath through her aching throat.
    He blinked at her. “Now, that I almost believed. Good acting.” He turned and walked out of the forge, returning to dump a blanket and pillow onto the floor near her. Wow, a pillow and blanket. She was making progress. Maybe he felt guilty about nearly strangling her to death.
    After he left, she snuggled into the blanket and put her head on the pillow, trying to find a comfortable place on the floor and failing. Cold concrete wasn’t anything like comfy and her throat hurt like hell. Plus, there was nothing like almost being murdered in your sleep to keep a girl awake. Time to give up on sleep. Shivering, she sat up and hugged herself, leaning up against the wall behind her.
    On the upside, she was further along with Aeric than she’d thought she’d get so soon—and she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there. No matter. She had a sliver of hope that she might live to finish her mission and that was all that mattered. It was more than she could wish for, considering.
    She stared into the