Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Time slows until every second feels like an hour.
Fear drowns out the resentment in my mom’s yellow and lavender eyes for a second.
For one second. The last second. Her entire face is lined with utter terror and her mouth is still slightly open from that final gasp.
And her terrified eyes remain locked on me.
Next to her, my dad is staring at me in shock, his silver and turquoise eyes wide.
And for that one moment, time seems frozen. As if this one second lasts for an age.
Then a deep red cut appears across their throats.
Blood bursts out and runs down their necks like a flood, staining their worn shirts red.
They topple to the side.
Light from the white faelight gems in the chandelier above paints silver highlights in my dad’s blond hair when he falls. His eyes are still wide with shock, but the light in them is fading. Fast. Too fast.
Thuds echo into the cavernous ballroom as my parents hit the floor. Lying on their sides, they stare at me from across the polished stone floor while their bodies convulse. Once. Twice.
The wounds across their throats are so deep that the ice blades almost decapitated them. Blood pours out of the brutal cuts, forming pools around them and turning my mom’s long silver hair red at the ends.
Then the last flicker of light in their eyes dies.
I can see the moment it happens. The moment that the final spark of life leaves their eyes.
The moment that they change from being people to being bodies on the floor.
Even in death, that terrified expression remains on my mom’s features as her unseeing eyes stare at me from across the bloodstained floor.
My throat hurts.
And someone is screaming.
It takes me another second to realize that my throat hurts because I am screaming.
Time snaps back into place.
Another scream tears from the very depths of my soul, splitting the air like an explosion.
Ice shoots through the air.
I stumble as I’m shoved backwards while a massive wall of fire roars across the room. Shards of ice slam into the flames, and hissing steam explodes across the room as the two forces hit.
“Selena!” Alistair yells at me while sending another wave of fire across the room. “We need to go!”
“NO!” I scream.
Or continue screaming. I don’t think I’ve stopped screaming since she slit their throats, but it’s difficult to tell because I can barely hear anything over the ringing in my ears.
“No, I need to get them!” I scream, staggering a step forward again. “I need to—”
Alistair wraps a strong arm around my waist and yanks me back while sending another torrent of fire across the room. Ice slams into it, creating another cloud of hissing steam.
“No!” I scream again, struggling against Alistair’s grip.
With one arm wrapped around my waist and the other shooting fire at Jessina, he backs towards the portal. Panic clangs inside me. I can’t just leave them. I can’t leave them. My parents. I can’t just—
Twisting to the side, Alistair throws me through the portal while sending a massive wave of fire in the other direction. I fly through it like a limp doll and crash down on the floor of a small study inside Orion’s castle. Alistair leaps through the portal a moment later.
“Close it!” he screams.
Ice shoots towards us from the other side of the portal.
Grey immediately slams the portal back into the ground, shutting it right before a hail of ice shards could get through.
“NO!” I cry. Scrambling to my feet, I run over to where the portal used to be. “Open it!”
“What happened?” Galen yells over the chaos that erupts inside the room.
Or it might just be inside my own head. I can barely see what’s happening around me. All I can see is the fear and shock in my parents’ eyes as Jessina slit their throats.
“She killed them!” I scream. My throat is raw and every word tastes like blood and iron. “She killed them! Take me back! I have to go back!”
“Her parents,” Alistair is saying from somewhere right next to me. “Jessina killed her parents.”
Just hearing those words from someone else shatters everything inside me. As if I could pretend that it wasn’t real, that it wasn’t too late, until someone else acknowledged what happened.
A broken cry rips from my lungs, and I whip around towards Grey. “Open the portal! I need to go back! Take me back! I need to get them! I need to—”
“Selena!” Alistair grabs me by the shoulders and spins me back around to face him. “They’re already dead.” His orange and green eyes are filled with pain and sorrow as he holds my gaze and repeats softly, “They’re already dead.”
Tears well up in my eyes. Shaking my head, I try desperately to unhear his words while a broken whimper escapes my lips.
“I’m sorry.” His eyes are filled with agony as he holds my gaze. “I’m so sorry.”
My knees buckle.
I crash down on the floor so hard that it sends a jolt through my body. But I can barely feel it. Pressing my palms against the floor, I bow forward and try to gasp air back into my lungs. My chest feels like it’s being crushed by a boulder. Broken sobs escape my lips, and my entire body trembles.
“Selena,” Isera says, her voice gentler than I have ever heard.
Still on my knees, I look up to meet her gaze.
But she is standing right next to Draven, and my eyes immediately go to him.
Galen and Lyra must have removed the iron chains that bound his wings, because he has now shifted into his fully human form.
His face is still pale with pain, and Galen is bracing him with an arm around his back where they stand close to the door.
As if they were just on their way to Haldia when Alistair and I returned.
There is a war going on behind Draven’s eyes as he looks at me. As if he wants to rush over and comfort me but at the same time doesn’t even want to touch me because of how much that flame of hatred in his chest is still telling him that he wants nothing to do with me.
Desperate longing and unyielding hatred fight in his eyes.
For one single moment, it looks like he’s about to rush over and wrap me in his arms.
But then the hatred wins out, and he looks away.
The final shard that remained of my already broken heart shatters into a million irreparable pieces.
“Get out,” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
Galen glances between me and Draven, pain evident on his face. “Selena, he doesn’t—”
“Get out.”
They all just look back at me with eyes full of sympathy and pain. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
“Get out,” I press out, my chest suddenly heaving. “Get out. Get out! GET OUT!”
My screams echo against the pale stone walls of the small study, but I can barely hear it over the blood roaring in my ears. I need to be alone. I hate having people around me when I’m in pain. I want to be left alone. I just want to be left alone. Oh Goddess, it hurts.
Alistair strokes a gentle hand over my back as he starts towards the door. The others thankfully follow him.
I gasp out broken sobs as they all leave the room and close the door softly behind them.
The moment the door clicks shut, everything inside me shatters.
Another desperate scream rips from my soul. Still on my knees, I bow forward and slam my fist against the ground while screaming my lungs out. Tears stream down my face like unstoppable floods.
They’re gone. My parents are gone. In less than five seconds, my entire world changed forever. And I can never get them back.
Agony slashes through my chest like claws.
I gasp in a panicked breath. Then another scream tears out of me, and I pound my fist against the floor over and over again while tears continue flowing down my cheeks. Broken sobs escape my lips before more screams rip out of me.
She killed them. Jessina killed my parents.
Pain slashes through my throat as I scream my fucking lungs out.
She killed them. She slit their throats like they were nothing. She wiped out their futures with one flick of her wrist.
Shooting to my feet, I whip my head from side to side in search of something to break. Anger courses through my veins like crackling fire.
I need to break something. I need to hear something break. I need to feel something break. Something other than my own heart.
Grabbing the chair next to me, I hurl it into the wall on the other side.
Wood snaps as it crashes into the stone wall.
The satisfying sound fuels my rage, and I snatch up the already cracked chair and slam it into the wall again while another scream rips from the depths of my soul.
Rage and agony tear through my chest like feral wolves.
She killed them.
I slam the chair into the wall again.
She killed them. She killed them.
Chips of wood fly through the air as I shatter it against the thick stone wall. There isn’t a lot of furniture in this room. Only the now useless chair, a bare desk, and an empty bookcase by the wall. I break everything I can get my hands on.
But no matter what I do, I still can’t stop my own heart from being ground into dust beneath the mountain of grief and regret that is crushing me.
My knees buckle, and I crash down on the floor again. This time, I don’t even bother catching myself. I just lie there among the broken pieces of wood and stare at the light that falls in from the window to create bright rectangles on the floor. My chest aches.
Curling into a ball, I wrap my arms around myself
And then I cry my eyes out.