Never Keep (Sins of the Zodiac, #1)

by Caroline Peckham

The golden dagger lying on top of the pedestal that I had chosen for my abysmal hiding place shot from its position as he claimed it with a whip of air magic. I didn’t dare peek out again to see what he was doing with it, but The Cobra’s strangled screams gave me a fair idea. “I call upon the blood of the fallen,” the Grand Maester said loudly over the pleas of the dying man and the goblet shot away from the pedestal next. Again, I didn’t dare move, but as The Cobra choked and spluttered, I could only imagine that he was being forced to drink whatever the fuck had been in that goblet. “And so our offering is made. And so your feast is prepared.” Something changed as those words faded from my ears, something in the very air I breathed and the weight of the atmosphere surrounding me. There was a heaviness to the world which hadn’t been present until that moment and a cold sense of dread seeped right into my soul. My breath began to rise in a fog before me, my fingers trembling where they had curled around the hilt of my concealed dagger.