58. Ash
Chapter 58
Ash
I fell, the shards of glass falling around me. I threw the knife to the ground before impact and landed on my feet, taking the impact with my legs then rolling until I landed on my back with a resounding thump. The air escaped my lungs, and my ribs and feet cried in pain. I stared up through the darkness to the light that illuminated the window and Gabe’s angry face as he looked down at me.
Get up. Run, my mind yelled, and I listened. I coughed as I rolled to my feet, trying to get back the breath the fall had stolen from me. Shouts erupted, and soldiers rushed toward me from their posts around the estate.
Get tough or die. Those words had never meant more than they did right then. I blocked out the pain, shoving it down with everything else, grabbed my knife, and I sprang forward, away from the mansion, away from the soldiers.
I ran through the soldiers’ barracks and hid in a shadowy alcove. There was no moon tonight—it was as black as death. The only lights were the ones that flickered overhead at the building entrances. Soldiers crept nearer, their weapons held out in front of them. They couldn’t see me, but I could see them. I shut my eyes. I had to use my ability or I’d never survive. I focused on the string of my power, and I pulled. I ignored the endless possibilities and focused on the one tether that had always been the largest. Then I acted.
With the knife that was still covered in the Queen’s blood in my hand, I crept to the nearest soldiers among the buildings. My shoes made no sounds against the ground. I imagined I was hunting again. These soldiers were my prey.
I snuck up and shoved the knife through the back of a soldier’s neck, his blood mixing with the Queens. I covered his mouth with my other hand to keep him from crying out. He fell before my feet, and I yanked his gun from his hands, shoving it into my pants. This was a stealth mission. Firing a gun would only get me killed faster.
I could see the wall in the distance and the bush that covered the hole in the fence that would let me escape. Watch, breathe, anticipate, stab, over and over again, until my hands were red with blood and I was only one building away from the fence. I tucked myself back into the shadows again as I heard footsteps approaching.
“Ash,” Gabe’s voice rang into the night. A hard edge cloaked his tone that he had never used when speaking my name. My eyes shut once more, and his betrayal played through my mind again and again, but I still couldn’t bring myself to sneak up and stab him like all the others. I did know his ability to see in the dark was shit .
I spoke from the shadows. “Let me go, Gabriel ,“ I called.
His head jerked in my direction, but I could tell by the way his eyes moved he still couldn’t see me in my hiding place.
“You are just like them,” he rumbled. “You murdered them in cold blood.”
I wasn’t quite ready to tell him he was wrong. Let him believe what he wanted about me.
“You have no idea,” I sneered before dashing out of the shadows toward him. I shouldered into him, using my ability to watch his movements and take a leg out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. I pounced on top of him, noting he held a knife instead of a gun. I smashed my knee into his wrist, making him release it. I pushed my knife to his throat, staring down at green eyes that looked so much like a stranger’s. He fumbled with his hands, searching for the knife that I knew he couldn’t see in the darkness. I pressed the knife tip harder to his throat, and he paused.
“You…you have an ability, don’t you?” he grunted. “You lied to me.”
“I did what I had to, to ensure you never become King. How does it feel, Gabriel? How does it feel to have everything you ever wanted ripped away from you? How does it feel to have the person you loved the most betray you?”
He swallowed hard, his throat working against the knife. “You were working with the rebels?”
“I was working to make sure the blondes are set free.”
His nostrils flared, and he leaned into the knife. “They. Don’t. Deserve. It.”
I saw what was coming next, and I let it happen. He was stronger than me. There was no point in fighting, and I knew where his knife was. He punched me in the side and shoved my blade away from his neck, rolling us so he was on top of me, he grasped my hand putting my own blade to my throat.
“I should kill you right now,” he seethed. His hand shook. I could feel it where the blade met my skin.
“Then do it.”
He wanted to hate me, but something would always connect us together. I didn’t know if either of us were strong enough to actually follow through. He knew it and I knew it. That didn’t mean that I didn’t hate him for every vile thing he had ever done.
“I loved you.” His voice shook.
“If you really loved me, then you would have seen how broken I was. My heart was split open for you, and instead of putting it back together, you shoved a knife in and twisted. You only saw what you wanted to see. You only loved what you wanted to love. You never truly saw me and loved who I am. You never chose me.”
He breathed hard as his eyes raced over my face. The hard lines of his chest pressed against mine with every inhale.
I swallowed and felt the blade against my throat. “You killed Rafe, and you might as well have killed Nan, but you didn’t care for me enough to tell me. Or were you too afraid that if you told me, I wouldn’t do what you wanted?” I paused, the sounds of our breath filling the night air. “The worst part is I think I would’ve have forgiven you for everything if you had meant what you said about changing the country with me, but you fell for my grandfather’s manipulations instead.”
“He’s not manipulating me. He’s helping me.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, straight to hell.”
His eyes widened for a millisecond before he clamped his jaw shut, and a vein bulged in his forehead as he strained to keep me contained. White-hot rage poured into my body and swirled with the freezing chill of utter betrayal in my chest. I was nothing but the cold and dark of the night. Any feelings of love and warmth in me were abated. I was nothing but wrath, all rational thoughts disappearing from my mind. I gathered all the hatred and used the anger to wrap my hand around his knife lying next to us on the ground. My mind didn’t even second guess itself, my arm gave no pause as I plunged the knife into the fleshy part of his side below the kidney.
“How does it feel to be stabbed in the back?” I whispered in his ear.
I watched as his eyes widened in pain, grief, and utter shock. His grip faltered, and I shoved him off me. He reached around and touched the wound, his hand coming away bloody. He stared at the blood on his hand in disbelief. It wasn’t a fatal wound—he wouldn’t die. Was I a coward for not finishing him off?
He stared at the blood on his hand, like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. I watched as his face morphed into something much darker. “Run, Ash.” His voice was rough, broken, and teeming with malice. “If I ever see you again, I. Will. Kill. You.”
The game we’d been playing suddenly came to a startling ending, and I wasn’t sure who’d won. I ripped the ring I still wore off my finger and chucked it at his chest.
“Consider our engagement over.”
I turned and sprinted toward the fence, leaving Gabe lying in a puddle of his own blood. The prickly branches of the bush scraped my face as I skidded to a walk by the hole. My body stilled when a blood-curdling scream split the night air, followed by another that stopped my heart.
“Ash,” Ryan’s voice cried and stuttered. No. No. No. Jerek was supposed to get her out. Why didn’t Jerek get her out ?
“Show yourself, Asha, or I will slit her throat myself.” The King’s voice boomed into the night from back by the mansion. There was no choice. I was going back for her.
I crept along the shadow of the wall until I spotted a large group of soldiers holding weapons at the ready by the door of the mansion. One of Barrett’s large hands tugged back Ryan’s short hair, and his other hand clamped around her waist. Maximus stood beside them, impatiently tapping a finger on the handle of his gun.
I remained in the shadows, out of sight. The bitter winter air strangled the breath from my lungs. How had it all gone so wrong?
“Show yourself, granddaughter, or I will follow through with my threat.”
I took a calming breath that didn’t seem to fill my chest and pulled once more at my ability that was quickly fizzling in the back of my mind. I could feel it weakening and the surge of tiredness coming on from overdoing it. That couldn’t happen now. I needed it. Clutching two pistols in my palms, I stepped out into the light.