His dark gaze flicked over the space. I peered around the edge of one of the tree trunks at him, careful not to give away my location by moving any more than necessary.
Sebastian shook his head, as though he was disappointed that I wasn’t going to make things easy for him, then wandered over to the far side where the roses were—the deep, dark blue ones that he had brought me at the Pork Pit. The ones that I’d carefully pressed between the pages of a book of fairy tales like the stupid fool that I was.
Sebastian plucked one of the roses, then slowly twirled it around in his hand, studying the dark petals from all angles.
“Soft and silky,” he purred. “Just like your skin. You know, it’s a shame that we couldn’t come to some sort of arrangement, Gin. Given how easily you dispatched my father, I was going to offer you the chance to keep working for me as my own personal assassin.”
He paused.
“Well, perhaps it wouldn’t have been that much of a choice. People will do almost anything for you when they’re hooked on drugs. That bit that I dropped in your champagne was just a taste of things to come for you. But of course, you had to go and ruin things, the way other people always do.”
So that had been his plan for me. Shoot me up with drugs until I was completely dependent on them—and him. Just when I thought that he couldn’t be any crueler, Sebastian surprised me. But all that mattered now was finishing things—and him—before he hurt anyone else.
Here. Now. Tonight.
Sebastian started tearing the petals off the rose, casually scattering them in his wake, as though he were a flower girl strolling down the aisle at a wedding. He was three aisles over from me but headed toward the center of the greenhouse where I was hiding. So I just waited for him to get close enough for me to strike.
“But I suppose that sort of arrangement would never really have worked,” he called out in a light, airy voice, as though we were talking about something of no importance, instead of the complete loss of my own self. “I mean, look how easily I managed to turn you against that old man and his son. I couldn’t allow someone to turn you against me so easily. I couldn’t take that risk. Not with you, Gin. Although I am curious to know how you became an assassin and why.”
He paused again, as if he actually expected me to answer him. “I have my own theories, you know. In fact, I’ve had a lot of fun these past few weeks coming up with one story after another. I’m guessing, of course, that something rather tragic happened to you when you were younger, especially given the fact that you don’t seem to have any real family left. Was that it? Your family was murdered, and you became an assassin in hopes of someday getting your revenge and righting the great wrong and terrible injustice that was done to you? Hmm?”
He was closer to the truth than he knew. Those were some of the very reasons I’d become an assassin, although I still wasn’t sure who the Fire elemental was who’d murdered my family. But if I ever found out, then that bitch was getting dead.
Provided, of course, that I lived through the next five minutes.
“I’ve had to speculate, you see, because despite all the times that we were together, you never really talked about yourself,” Sebastian said. “Every time I tried to ask you a personal question, you would turn the conversation in another direction. You were quite good at that. In fact, you’ve been better at keeping your secrets than I expected.”
Sebastian reached the end of the aisle and sauntered over to the next one, heading back toward the front of the greenhouse and moving away from me.
I’d previously thought that the longest minutes of my life had been when I was hanging on to the window outside Tobias Dawson’s library, waiting for Mab to move away from me and take the horrible feel of her Fire magic along with her. But this was a hundred times worse.
Still, I held my position. All I had to do was wait for him to swing back this way, and then the bastard would be mine for the killing.
I could be patient for that. I could wait forever, as long as I knew that Sebastian would die in the end.
“Of course, there’s the other possibility,” he said, continuing with his musings. “That you don’t have any great tragedy in your past. That you enjoy violence. That you simply like killing people, so you decided to make yourself an expert at it. That’s certainly what I’ve done. My father wasn’t the first person I ever had murdered. I learned at an early age that it’s extremely easy to get people to do exactly what you want. All you have to do is push the right buttons, say the right things, and people will practically fall over themselves to do your bidding. That’s the difference between you and me, Gin. You take orders on who to kill, whereas I give them. Another reason I’m afraid that we’d never work out. But you do have to admit that it was fun while it lasted. Don’t you think?”
I still didn’t respond to his ditherings. I was much more focused on the fact that he had reached the end of the second aisle, had stepped into the third, and was ambling back in my direction.
“But unfortunately, our time together has come to an end,” Sebastian said.
He stopped, and I thought that he might stay where he was, about halfway down the aisle, but he slowly headed in my direction. I drew in a breath and got ready. I’d only have one shot at him, and I needed to make it count.
“I know you actually thought that we might have a future together, but I have to admit something,” Sebastian crooned, his voice taking on a mischievous note, as though what he was about to say was somehow amusing. “You’re just not my type, Gin. Not connected enough, not rich enough, not pretty enough, and certainly not strong enough.”
He walked right by my position. I stepped out from the shadows, raised my knife high, and brought it down, aiming for the center of his back—
Sebastian whipped around and caught my hand in his. I tried to break his grip, but he reached for his magic, essentially encasing my arm in his own fist of stone.
He gave me a smug, satisfied smile, then shook his head. “Oh, Gin. Don’t you know that you gave yourself away? The greenhouse might be made of glass, but there’s still enough stone in here to whisper to me about all of your intentions, all of your hopeless little plans. And there’s still enough stone in here for me to kill you with.”
One of the stone planters sitting on a table to my left shattered at his words, the bits of resulting shrapnel zipping through the air and straight into my side. I yelped with pain and tried to pull my hand free, but Sebastian tightened his grip. He gave me a bored look, then snapped my wrist all the way back.