“Varen,” Isobel called, straining in the skeleton’s grip to twist toward him. “Listen to me. The link, it can be broken. It is already. Our bond—it’s stronger. Do you hear me? The ribbon. Look.” Isobel swiveled her wrist, waving the sash. “It’s here in my hand. Please. All you have to do is take it.”
“Tell me,” Lilith said as she strode toward Varen, her long white train dragging after her. “How do you like my new sculpture? My own version of Death and the Maiden. I made it for you, you know. Thought it would appeal to your tastes. Those grim sensibilities that first drew you to me.”
Varen neither blinked nor flinched as the demon approached him. And despite Isobel’s instructions, her pleas, he didn’t look her way, either.
“You’re speechless, I see,” Lilith went on, “but I assume you must approve, since you’ve yet to make a single alteration.”
Isobel frowned, eyes falling to the skeletal hand that wrapped around her wrist, and that no thought of her own could loosen.
Was Lilith just goading them again, or could it be true that Varen was allowing this?
If he held the power to set Isobel free with a thought, why wasn’t he using it?
For that matter, if he was capable of setting them both free with one simple action, as Reynolds had told her, then what was stopping him?
“Varen?” she called to him again, but when he once more failed to meet her gaze, she had no choice but to consider what Lilith had said. How she knew he’d been there the whole time.
Suddenly Isobel wondered if Varen had given her the slip on purpose. Could he have been using her as bait? As a means to lure Lilith into this confrontation?
With new wounds so fresh and deep, and a spirit consumed once more by hatred, would he now trade everything—including her—for a chance to exact revenge?
Though Isobel didn’t want to believe the doubts casting thick shadows over her sinking heart, the fact that Varen had yet to acknowledge her in any way only served to stoke the embers of her growing uncertainty.
“Varen, please,” Isobel pleaded. “Just . . . come take the ribbon and it’ll be over. She won’t be able to touch us ever again.”
“Hear how she entreats you,” cooed Lilith as she wound her way around Varen to stand at his back. “How gratifying that must be.”
The skeleton statue moved again, and twirling Isobel to face the open grave, it wrenched her arm in its socket. She cried out in pain, her knees buckling. But the statue’s sinewy stone arm caught her before she could tip forward into the grave. Pulling her snug once more, the Red Death refroze, holding Isobel’s ribbon hand aloft as though they had simply entered a new step in their waltz.
“Come now,” Lilith said, speaking into Varen’s ear, eyeing Isobel over his shoulder, “she simply must know what this means to you before I send her off to bed. Think back to how much you craved the merest of glances from her in the beginning, how badly you longed for one touch, let alone an outright petition for your love. And you hid it so well from her. From everyone but me, that is. You do remember why, don’t you?”
As Lilith spoke, Isobel could see the rigidness in Varen’s shoulders increase, the dullness in his eyes deepen.
“Would that she could see all those dreams of her you could not help,” Lilith continued. “But then again, in a way I suppose she already has, hasn’t she? I dare say Pinfeathers saw to that. Funny, though, how that creature—your own dreams run rampant—so quickly became her nightmare.”
“He scared me, Varen, yes, but I loved him too, okay?” Isobel called to him. “She’ll trick you again if you let her. She’ll trick us both into doing what she wants. Don’t you see that she must have known the whole time about Bruce?”
“Don’t you see that she must have known the whole time about Bruce?” repeated the demon, her onyx eyes flicking to Isobel as she spoke into Varen’s ear.
Isobel shook her head. “I would have told you,” she said. “I wanted to. But I had to get you home first. I had to get you out of here. Varen, please!”
“Well, go on,” Lilith said, waving a delicate hand toward Isobel. “You have my blessing. Collect your token. Declare your fidelity to another. Send me away, if that’s what you want. Be warned, though, that should you accept her terms, unlike mine, they last only as long as her love for you. And when that expires, as it inevitably will, I will return for you. Lay waste to whatever remains of your craven soul.”
Varen shifted from foot to foot, his gaze at last trailing to Isobel.
