91
A pain I’d never felt before. A pain so sudden and excruciating that it stole my breath.
A sob escaped from my parted lips. My fingertips gradually slipped away from his cheek.
I sensed blood rising in my throat and leaking from the corners of my mouth.
His sword turned into black smoke; mine clanged to the ground with a metallic thud.
Very slowly, I looked down.
The ornate hilt of my dagger stuck out from my stomach, just beneath the edge of my armor. His hand still gripped it.
The hand I had taken to save him.
The hand I had clung to for survival.
The hand that had made me feel safe.
The hand that had made me discover an unspeakable pleasure.
The hand I had kissed.
The hand that had subdued, possessed, loved me.
The hand that, in the end, had stabbed me to death.
I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe he had chosen to give up Calien’s Crystal, which would soon disintegrate after my passing.
That he had chosen to live a life without me.
Instead, he had found the strength to accept it. He had hesitated only for a moment, tricking me into thinking I had beaten his darkness and gotten my Amlach back, then he had made his decision.
And now my own blade was inside me, angled upward, toward my lungs. Toward my heart.
Suddenly, Mornon viciously twisted it into my flesh. I let out an inarticulate sound of unbearable pain, instinctively clutching the armor plates on his biceps as I spat a crimson gush across his chest.
Startled, I looked into his eyes, which burned once more, and gazed at him with terrible sadness. He peered down at me with an expression that formed a kaleidoscope of emotions: anger, regret, hatred, desire, disappointment.
“We could have had it all . . .” he whispered.
He raised his free hand to trace the outline of my wounded face, his fingertips following the path to the blood trickling from my chin.
He dipped his pads into the red liquid, nostrils flaring and pupils dilating like a ravenous raptor’s.
“But you lied to me.” He grabbed my chin violently, pulling my face closer to his to drink every gurgling whimper that escaped my lips. “You said you would choose me.”
Seeing tears streaming down my cheeks like the blood that was wetting his hand in gushes, Mornon dropped his forehead against mine and pinched his eyes closed with a barely noticeable grimace.
A strangely familiar warmth, but now much stronger, spread through my abdomen.
Mornon straightened, looking down at me harshly. “But you didn’t.”
He brutally yanked the dagger out of my guts and shoved me off the balcony.