CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brennan turned the blade again, pointing it toward the fire, his entire body facing it, refusing to look my way.
My chest tightened, and for a second, I absolutely could not breathe.
All the mistakes I’d made, all the ways I’d accidentally left him clues, forgotten myself, forgotten who I was …
The moments I’d forgotten to be Olivay, when I referenced dialogue between us that hadn’t happened—because they’d happened when I was in another body—when I was another person with another face, another name …
They all came rushing back to me in one horrifying, overwhelming wave, making me sick to my stomach.
“Brennan, what are you doing?” I asked, my voice shaking, my eyes on the dagger in his hand.
I sounded pathetic, and worse, I sounded like a liar, but the blood oath was pulsing, and I had no choice but to keep lying, to keep hiding the monster I was deep down inside.
The thing that could fly, the beast whose skin exploded into red scales, whose wings ended in claws.
The thing that killed my mother, that stole her last breath–that was doing it all over again. The thing that was killing the very person I cared for most in this world.
He will die.
By the fucking Gods. By Orsete, Kavrir and Batrir.
It wasn’t enough that there was a part of me destined to ruin and destroy everything and everyone good in my life.
It wasn’t enough for me to come to terms with the fact that I was nothing more than a wild, scaly beast. That this thing that roared and flew and hunted inside my skin was what my mother’s love had turned me into.
It wasn’t enough that that was what the witch at the caves saw when she looked at me. That I was completely unworthy of love
No. All of those truths couldn’t be fucking enough. Because my failure also had to be prophesized. It had to be written in the Book of Orsete.
I’d been a fool. A fool who’d allowed herself to forget.
Who’d convinced herself that she was actually a princess, that when she kissed Brennan, it was real.
That when we talked and shared secrets and hopes and dreams, I was somebody worthy of him.
That Brennan and I were, that we were … My stomach twisted, my heart thumping …
I’d convinced myself we were falling in love.
He raised his dagger higher, his eyes blazing. “Who are you?”
“It’s me,” I said, my voice rasping. I blinked, contorting my face into one that was all innocence and confusion. Her face. “It’s always been me. Princess Olivay of Spartva, House Kanos, daughter of King—”
“Stop. Stop! Please,” he seethed, practically lunging forward. “Just stop. Okay? I know.” He sucked in a breath, his voice shaking, his body trembling. “I fucking know.”
“What are you going to do with the knife? Brennan, you’re scaring me.”
He laughed incredulously. “I’m scaring you?
With this?” He pointed the tip right at my neck.
“You’re not scared. Not of me. Not of this dagger.
” He shook the blade. “I’ve seen what you can do.
What you’re capable of—what you can turn into.
” His nostrils flared. “I probably need it more than you do.”
“You don’t,” I said.
“Because you’d never hurt me—”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Or lie to me,” he snarled.
“I—”
“Gods!” he roared. “If you’re going to tell me anything, at least, tell me the fucking truth.”
“I have.”
He took a step forward, and pointed the edge of the blade right at my heart. “No. You haven’t.”
My teeth chattered, my entire body shivering with the cold and the rain.
Brennan’s fury and heartbreak were washing over me.
He was angry and hurt and betrayed and scared, and I could feel all of it.
Worse, I was feeding off of it. And the scar across my wrist was on fire, the blood oath pounding and pulsing, warning me of danger.
He stepped forward again, and my heart thundered as I stepped back.
“Do you know,” he said, “I’m not surprised by the narrative my father chose tonight.
The story he’s using to deal with those thugs.
Nor am I surprised by the punishment it will offer them.
” His voice darkened, his lips twisting.
“They fucking deserve everything that’s coming.
” Brennan seethed. “Even now, I’m fucking fighting to stop myself from tearing out of here, from finding the bastards and ripping them apart, limb from limb, just for daring to lay a hand on you.
” He held the hilt so tightly, his fingers were turning white.
“But, what’s killing me is I know those men who took you, who hurt you, who wanted to—” He exhaled sharply.
“I grew up with them at court, I know their character, and I can tell you—I’ve never once seen them act honorably, or tell the truth about anything in their entire fucking lives.
” He stepped forward again, and I stepped back. “Not once. Not until tonight.”
My stomach twisted. The panic rising inside of me felt like it was exploding through my limbs. “I-I don’t understand.”
“You do, though,” he said, stepping toward me again.
“You know better than anyone. The scum were telling the truth about what they saw—about why they took you.” He laughed again, the sound hollow and bitter as he jabbed the edge of the knife away from me, and pointed it toward my cape, wet and discarded on the bed.
“Fucking ironic, isn’t it? The most dishonorable moment of their lives, the worst, lowest thing they could possibly do.
And for the first time ever, they were telling the truth. ”
“And you’re going to what?” I cried. “Blame me for what they did? Call me a liar?”
“I’m not blaming you.” He stepped in again, his eyes growing wild with rage and hurt and betrayal. And I was sucking it all down, devouring all of it. The Azete was rushing up and down my limbs with fervor. Eating. Feasting. Devouring.
Killing him.
“Brennan!” I ran out of space to move. My back hit the wall, and his hand slammed against it, just like that night in the moon garden when he had me pressed against the tree. Trapped between the trunk and his arm. His body heat radiating off of him, his passion unbridled.
But this time, instead of leaving me an exit, his other hand went to my neck, the blade of the knife just a whisper from my skin.
I gasped, shrinking against the stones at my back. “Brennan!”
The rain fell even harder outside, and the wind howled through the storm, blowing violently against the windowpanes. The flames flickered in the fireplace, and Brennan pressed the tip of his knife into my skin, bringing his lips just a breath away from mine.
“I know what I saw,” he said. “And I know what I’ve been seeing.
It was you out there tonight. The Azete with red hair.
The black pants, the shirt, the boots, the cloak.
” His brows furrowed. “The exact same ones you wore at the tavern. You thought I wouldn’t remember?
That I hadn’t sealed every detail of you those nights into my mind?
Gods! You even had the same fighting style, the same—”
“But I’m not—” I said, making one final, desperate attempt to fulfill my oath, to keep up the lie. To be Olivay.
He pressed the blade in.
“Brennan!” I screamed.
“Come on. I know you’re pretending. I know you can get out of this,” he taunted. “That my strength is nothing compared to yours. So do it! Do it! Shift! Escape. Change!”
“I can’t–I don’t—”
“Yes, you can. You can shift! You’re not in any danger from me and you Godsdamned-well know it.”
And then, before I could figure out why or how it happened, our lips crashed together, his tongue licking the seam of mine, opening my mouth to his in a gasp. I kissed him, hard, my arms wrapping around his back, pulling him into me.
All of his emotions, the anger and hurt he was feeling, were suddenly channeled into a powerful, overwhelming desire and need. A lust driven by emotions and heart—and all for me.
If I thought the Azete had been feeding before, it had been nothing. Because he was pouring himself into me, kissing me with such passion and fire, I thought I’d die.
He gripped my chin with his fingers before sliding them down and down, grazing over my breast, and squeezing until I moaned.
And at that moment, he pushed the knife against my neck, with just enough pressure to draw a single bead of blood.
I cried out. The shock of it, the shock of it being Brennan, caused something inside of me to shift. No, not inside of me. Outside.
The blade had triggered some innate mechanism of Azete survival. It had forced me to shift without trying, without wanting to. Like that day in the woods with my mother.
I turned into the thing that felt safest—that seemed most likely to protect me. When I faced the chimera, it was a red, scaled beast. A demon from the fires of hell.
But for Brennan, the form I had taken had hazel eyes, brown curly hair, a curvy chest, and full hips. The toned arms and thighs of a dancer. His knife clattered to the floor, his chest heaving, his eyes red with tears.
“S-Samara?” he said and took a step back.
I could see my reflection in the mirror across the room—the face of the dancer, the body I never thought I’d wear again.
Brennan stumbled back again. Not from shock, but from the loss of energy.
I raced forward, wrapping my arms around him before he fainted and held him to me.
But he pulled back, pushing my hair over my shoulder, touching my neck, searching for the wound he would not find. The cut that I’d already healed.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, kissing my neck before he buried his face in the crook. “I was looking for you.”
“I know.”
“And you were here—all this time. In this body?”
“No. Not the whole time. It wasn’t until-–”
“The tourney,” he said quietly. “The first night of the tourney.”
I nodded. “When you untied the ribbons. When we kissed.”
He shook his head and stepped back from me. “You called me Brennan that night. Olivay never had before.”
My face fell. “She hadn’t?”