The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing compared to being whipped and having to be back out in the field before the wounds hardly had time to scab over.”
    “We’re not slaves anymore. That means you get hurt, you rest,” Bastet said reaching to take the gun from him.
    “Move out the way, Bastet.”
    “Devdan—“
    “I get it. You don’t want me to fall out and die. I doubt that’s going to happen, but if you’re that worried sit over there and just watch to make sure,” Devdan said reaching up with his left hand to move the woman out the way.
    She went with the gentle force of his push, because if she really wanted to stand her ground Devdan was sure it would have taken much more force to move her. She leaned against the wall behind him and without even looking at a target, Devdan shot and landed a perfect bullseyes.
    Finally he said to Bastet without looking at her, “What do you want?”
    “Me and Irvin are about to come up with a way to infiltrate Tsubame’s city to get MaLeila,” Bastet replied. “I figured you’d want to be a part of that conversation.”
    After he managed to miss his next shot, Devdan replied, “Why the fuck should we even bother?”
    His focus back, Devdan unloaded the empty rounds, reloaded and took five simultaneous shots. He could practically feel Bastet stand up straight and hook her fingers into her jeans behind him, face pulled into a tense glare.
    “I assumed it was a given that we were going after her. That’s generally how it’s always worked.”
    “Cut the bullshit, Bastet,” Devdan said, finally turning around to face his sister, not biologically, but in spirit by shared circumstance at the very least. “You feel it.”
    “You’re going to have to be straight with me for once.”
    “The bind is gone,” Devdan said.
    “I’d noticed.”
    “So it means that we don’t have to chase her anymore, go after her every time she gets into some type of trouble, follow her to hell and back because we don’t have a choice and everything we are and do will compel us to do it even if we aren’t aware of it.”
    “Yeah. We don’t have to,” Bastet said, her lips forming that same straight line they would form when he was just a teenager and she was a young woman ten years older and she was about to let him have it for something stupid he’d done. “But if you would take you head out of your fucking ass and stop being a dick, you’d also have noticed that everything that the three of us were wasn’t all because of that binding.”
    Devdan huffed. “Says the person who was convinced that Claude was a good master as far as masters went.”
    “For someone who claims to be a free man now, you sure are letting Claude master you even from the grave.”
    “At least I acknowledged I was his slave and there’s no way around that as opposed to you justifying it,” Devdan snapped back.
    “Look, Devdan, I get it. Things happened between you and Claude. Things that somehow you kept me in the dark about, but damn it he’s dead. And just because MaLeila happened to end up heir to his magical legacy doesn’t mean his personality and morals were a package deal. So it’s up to you. You can be a brooding insufferable asshole and stay here, confirming MaLeila’s fears about breaking that fucking binding in the first place. Or you can get over yourself and we can figure out how the hell we’re going to get to Tsubame, let alone where she’s got MaLeila tucked away,” Bastet snapped and then walked briskly out the room.
    Devdan turned back to the targets and lifted his gun to shoot again, only to find that his hand was shaking. Devdan wasn’t sure whether it was from exhaustion or distraction, but he was sure he hadn’t shaken this much while holding a gun since he first picked one up and made in his mind to get revenge on the man who murdered his intended.
    “Fuck,” he muttered as he slamming the gun down on the bench.
    He sat next to it, not quite ready to be amongst all the bustle and shuffle that