Chapter 10
Aimee
My rushed steps echo noisily as I run blindly through the corridors and gardens, rage and tears blurring my vision. I don’t know where I’m going, but I have to get away from here.
I burst out of the palace gates, my feet taking me toward the darkness of the silent dunes. I easily jump from the pathway bridge directly onto the sand below, rolling twice before I continue my sprint. The sand beneath my bare feet is cold; all the warmth of the day gone.
I can barely breathe, my lungs constricting in outrage.
How dare he?
How dare he humiliate me this way in front of Mael? To treat me like an object that he can stake his claim on, to attack and scare the poor human that was nothing but nice to me. A little flirty, sure, but I can flirt with whomever I Godsdamn please.
I heave, my muscles burning from the exertion, and I’m suddenly too weak to keep running.
The palace is only a blip behind me, and nothing but sandbanks stretch all around me.
I raise my head to the cursed heavens, wondering not for the first time in my life, what I have done in my previous existence that could warrant such misery in this one?
First, it was my father not giving a shit about me. My mother dying in childbirth.
Then it was Aurora and her perpetual torment, each time more wicked, more soul-crushing, until I became an anxiety-riddled shell of who I was supposed to be.
Murdering Chip in front of me.
Orchestrating my abuse.
Belittling me every chance she got.
Starving me.
Dimming my light. Stealing my voice. Barricading my powers under mountains of self-doubt and self-loathing.
And now Killian.
At least my family never pretended to love me. Never promised me the world, the stars, and the moon, only to give me heartbreak instead.
I blink my tears away, and I’m shocked at the dark canvas of the night sky, glittering with millions of stars.
I’ve never seen so many stars at once, and it makes me feel small.
Like all my troubles, heavy as they are on my soul, they’re insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
We’re just fucking specks of dust compared to the vastness of the universe.
If Imiryion falls, if Aurora wins and this realm shatters, the universe will still go on as if nothing happened.
What’s the point then?
If our existence is so inconsequential, is it even worth it?
All this pain.
All this suffering.
It amounts to nothing.
Frustration bubbles up in my chest, and I close my eyes, letting a curling scream out to the high heavens.
My shadows explode from my skin, rushing out of me in dark ripples, stretching far and wide, covering everything in blackness.
They pour and pour out of me like a tidal wave of numbing despair that blankets the world around me.
Lost as I am in my grief and my rage, I don’t hear him coming.
All of a sudden, a vicious force tackles me to the ground, and I grab onto his shoulders, dragging him down with me. We roll over the side of the dune, sand flying everywhere, until I land on my back, Killian on top of me, heaving, his pupils blown out in anger.
“Get off me, you brute,” I snarl, wiggling my body as I try to escape from under him.
“No.”
My blood boils at the arrogant finality in that single word. He thinks he can dominate and manhandle me whichever way he wants?
Fuck him.
I clench my fist and draw it back with quick reflexes, and unlike the last time I tried this when we had just met, I’m stronger and faster now, landing a punch square in his nose.
It crunches loudly under my knuckles, and blood pours from his nostrils as the force of the blow throws him off me.
I don’t lose momentum and hurl myself on top of his body, straddling his hips as I continue to land punches to his chest and jaw.
“What the fuck, Aimee,” he grunts between hits.
“Fuck you, asshole. You don’t get to push me around like some easily discarded rag doll.”
He catches my wrists and pins them against our bodies, bringing me closer to his disheveled face. His nose is already healing thanks to his vampiric powers, but I can smell the tang of iron coating his lips, his chin, his neck.
“That’s it, umbra. Show me your true colors. The vicious little thing you really are,” he growls through clenched teeth. Loathing and arousal float through his ebony eyes, and his hard cock nudges my thigh where I’m pressed against him.
The motherfucker gets a kick out of this, doesn’t he?
Can I blame him, though?
Not really. Not when heat spreads from my core, unfurling inside my body until I’m burning up like a cursed torchlight made from flesh and desire.
I try to wrestle my hands free, but it’s no use. He has me in a vice grip, and it’s only becoming more painful the more I struggle.
“I already showed you who I am, Killian. I told you who I was, and you threw me away,” I say, my voice laced with venom.
“But that’s the thing, Aimee. You didn’t,” he answers back, spitting blood. “You showed me the version you wanted me to see, and I gobbled it up like an Akaoridamn fool.”
“No,” I say, my voice barely a whisper despite the chaos roaring inside me. “I told you about my trauma. Tried to warn you about my sister in the best way I could. I really—”
“You lied to me.” His voice booms in the night, cutting me off.
“You hid exactly the parts of your story that would have saved us a lot of trouble. Marhus wouldn’t be dead right now.
So many others besides him.” The malice dripping from his cold voice slashes through my chest like a dagger, directly to the heart. “Their deaths are on your hands.”
“You think I don’t know that?” My voice breaks with endless guilt. “You think it doesn’t haunt me?”
“Does it?” he asks, his tone callous. “Or are you again just saying what I want to hear?”
“Fuck you, Vampire King,” I spit through gritted teeth. I pull at my wrists again, but he only grabs me harder, his fingers digging into my flesh.
“I’m not letting you go, umbra. Face what you’ve done. How you broke us.”
Tears start spilling over my lashes again as I look at his beautiful face filled with sorrow.
“If you hate me so much, why won’t you let me go? Why torment me? Why claim me in front of Mael and risk an alliance we won’t survive without?”
His eyes narrow into obsidian slits at the mention of the human. He tugs me violently toward him, my mouth just a whisper above his. I can feel his cool breath fanning my face, and it makes the hair on my body stand on end.
“I hate your lies, your betrayal. How you ripped the heart from my chest and stomped all over it. How you continue to do so by flirting in my fucking face with Blaise, and now with that human twat.”
My breath catches in my throat, and flames scorch my insides at his possessive tone.
All pretense is gone between us. His jealousy has my heart in a chokehold. My rageful mind wants to refute his words, to tear into him for being a hypocritical asshole. But the softer side of me trembles at his covetousness.
“I hate how obsessed I still am with you,” he continues. “I don’t trust you, Aimee, but I will not let another steal what’s mine.”
“I am not yours,” I reply out of pure stubbornness.
Oh, but how I wish I were.
His cruel laugh reverberates through my skull. There’s a charged electricity crackling between us, and for a split second nothing happens. Then he whispers, “I’ll prove you are,” and lunges at me.
My back hits the sand as he flips us over, looming over me menacingly before he brings his mouth down on mine in a punishing kiss. It’s all tongue and teeth, vicious and desperate, and I can taste his blood in my mouth.
I never thought I would like the taste of blood, but as his hits my tongue, I moan loudly, an unhinged frenzy overcoming my limbs.
He let go of my hands sometime ago, and I make good use of them, grabbing his midnight strands and tugging harshly, exposing more of his jaw and throat.
My tongue laps feverishly at the blood coating his skin, and I raise my hips toward his erection, desperately looking for friction.
He’s an addiction I can’t get rid of, a curse that is eating me from the inside out.
But if he’s my ruin, then why does his touch feel like salvation?
My shadows have been churning against the confines of my flesh since he tackled me to the ground, and I don’t want to keep them at bay anymore.
With a sigh, I let go of the tether that keeps them grounded to me, and my shadow double emerges at the same time as Shadow Killian.
They waste no time in colliding, two forces of darkness unraveling each other before our eyes.
Their urgency for one another is unmatched.
Our powers come from the part of our soul that doesn’t care about wrongdoing and betrayal.
The part of our soul that isn’t complete without the other.
“Truce?” Killian’s tentative question comes, the same one he asked a few days ago in his study.
This time around, I nod fervently, unable to avoid my feelings any longer.
I want him.
I will always want him.
We come crashing down like the sun and the moon, the waves and the shore, fire and ice.
He wraps his fingers around my disheveled hair and fists it close to my nape as he peppers kisses down the column of my throat, lingering against my pulse point.
His fangs graze the skin there ever so slowly, and I feel the pressure of their sharp tips right before Killian moves his head back abruptly.
His crazed eyes drink me in—a mirror of mine, surely—obsession and yearning swimming in them. I claw at his black shirt, buttons flying everywhere.
“Umbra,” he says between ragged breaths. “I don’t think I can do gentle right now.”
My heart clenches at the thoughtfulness behind that sentence.
“Fuck gentle,” I growl.
His resolve hardens, and his lips are on me instantly, trailing a line of pure fire against my collarbones while his calloused hands grip the silky bodice and rip it to shreds.