I just… wasn’t sure how I was going to create it.
“What’s your plan, then?” she countered.
Shit.
I paused, only half a hallway away from the door that led into the throne room.
Whatwasmy plan?
I couldn’t kill him myself. That much, I knew for sure.
Diora couldn’t kill him for me—she was connected to his magic too, through his brother, who was Diora’s mate now.
I had no other connections in this kingdom or any other one since my family had been slaughtered and everyone back home probably thought I’d been killed along with the rest of them.
Stars.
What was I going to do?
“I want him to suffer,” I finally said to Diora, meeting those damned golden eyes of hers.
“Understandable.” Diora nodded once. “Do you want to torture him?”
I shuddered at the memories of my own torture.
Of the physical, emotional, and even sexual pain.
Could I do that to someone else?
Killing him wasn’t cruel, but torture… there was no reason for it that I could support.
Not even revenge.
“I have an idea,” Diora said.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “If this is where you tell me to abandon my revenge plan…”
“It’s not.” Her eyes gleamed a bit wickedly. “We’ll need time to find the bastard who ran our prison. If you lean on the soulmate thing, you can use that to find out whether or not he played a role in our torture. If he did, I have friends who can take him out for us, since neither of us can. If he didn’t, we leave him alive.”
I scowled at the idea of leaving him alive.
He had been the reason for my pain and loss; I wanted him gone.
But she did have a point.
If I could seduce him into thinking I wanted him the way a soulmate should, I could learn about him. Understand him. Figure out what made him tick, and just how much he deserved the revenge that was coming for him. And when I did finally convince someone to take his life, it would hurt him that much more if he’d had feelings for me.
It was a wicked plan… but not a cruel one.
And it was exactly what I needed it to be.
“What’s it going to be?” Diora checked. “Are we going in magic-blazing, or soulmate-who’s-been-locked-in-a-pretty-cell pissed?”
“The second one.” I turned back toward the doors, staring at the entrance to the next part of my life.
The gates that would lead to my revenge.
“I’m going to make him fall in love with me,” I told Diora, striding toward the doors once again. “And then, I’m going to break him.”