2 #2
“Oh, Blair, I guarantee you: I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Yeah? Then try me.”
“Your aunt was right. Your mothers have been too blinded by their love for you to see your empty threats and incompetence. That deep down, beneath all that fury and poison you spit and sputter, you are nothing but a frightened girl.”
Gatilla. My aunt. My aunt that Caryan fucked. Because he had been her slave, not because he wanted to. Right?
Wrong.
Face it—my aunt was everything I never was and never would be. Alluring. Intriguing. Mesmerizing. Something that inspired awe and fear.
Caryan laughs darkly, as if he could, indeed, read every dark thought running through my bones. Every dark memory, burnt into me. My despair. My jealousy, which almost ate me up. The pain of watching them for all those years.
I bare my teeth at him. “I’ll clap when I’m impressed.”
“You are. You just don’t show it. But you believe the lie—that I only fucked her because she made me. Lies, Blair. I liked fucking her. More than fucking you. Why do you think I so rarely sought you out?”
His words punch the breath from my lungs.
I can’t speak, can’t even make a sound. Because having my worst fear confirmed is something elemental. I stand there as if struck by his lightning while he takes another step closer. So gracefully, without the faintest sound. Like a ghost himself. A ghost of old times.
Now he’s come. After all those long twenty-two years, I’ll finally get the closure I wanted back then. Needed .
“Don’t look at me like that. With that childlike hope in your eyes. You always were easy to read—all your pathetic fantasies bared open. Be glad it’s over. You don’t have to lie to yourself anymore.”
Another step. More cruel words lashing my soul, rendering me motionless.
“I know that you believed we were mates,” he continues—one more knife plunging into my belly and being twisted. “That you were destined to rule next to me.” A dangerous smile is curving his perfect lips. His long fangs are glinting in the darkness.
“It was never about that fucking throne!” I snarl back, unclenching my fists, letting my long nails spring free. Yes, wanting him broke me. But he broke the wrong parts. I still have my claws.
He tilts his head back and barks out a laugh.
A vicious sound I’ve never heard coming out of his elegant throat.
“You’re nothing but a dreamer,” he spits—the words Perenilla once hurled at me.
“Spoiled. Delusional. Obsessed with your own misery. Too blind to see I never even liked you. You’re more like your aunt than you’d dare admit. ”
“That’s a lie,” I say, but my voice is thin. Wrong. I’m slipping—back down, down, down into that dark hole I clawed my way out of years ago.
I reach for the only thing that’s ever kept me alive.
Anger. Fury. My tether.
“I fucking loved you. And you know it. You toyed with it.”
His smile dies. “Love.” He spits the word at me as if it were something unpalatable.
“Do you even know what that word means, Blair? Did you ever ask yourself what I wanted? Just once? How I felt, being her slave, being tortured and beaten and fucked, day after day, night after night? No, you have not. And why would you? You were so absorbed by your feelings and your absurd jealousy and your ridiculous acts of rebellion, you only ever saw yourself. It was always you against your aunt. You once called me a monster, but tell me—what does that make you?”
I want to bite out a sharp retort. Tell him to go fuck himself. But—
Is it true? Yes, I remember Caryan tired. Exhausted. Drained. But he was an angel, and angels have no feelings. Everyone knows that.
As if he can again read my thoughts, he says, “Oh, we do. We are not those numb creatures society paints us to be, to make it easier to hunt us all down. We might not be able to love, but we can feel, Blair. Our skin is still made of flesh. It still bleeds when you cut it. It still scars. But you never wanted to see. Because it was all about your selfish little life. All you wanted was to be my queen one day. But even how this would be achieved, you dared not think about.”
Another knife, cutting me deep. I don’t know what to say.
“Get away from her!”
My head snaps from Caryan to Melody, who’s appeared to my left between the trees—and only then do I notice how close I let him come.
Caryan whips his head to her, too, his gaze resting on her. And just like that, I’m forgotten. Discarded. Like a toy. Or rather, a dirty rag. Not worth a second thought. Wasn’t that ultimately the reason Caryan didn’t kill me on that mountain—that he just didn’t care enough to finish me?
But as all my ugly jealousy rises in me like bile, one thought rings out like a bell: Caryan found us. He would drag that girl back, maybe throw her into a prison cell and let her rot there, just like me. That girl who came back to free me.
“Run!” I shout at Melody. It’s all I can give her—time.
Then I launch myself at Caryan.
He’s too focused on Melody to pay attention, his eyes gobbling down the sight of her as if she were a freshly cut slab of meat.
Something’s wrong.
He’s never unfocused. He would never allow my claws to come close to his throat.
Only now he does.
A vicious snarl emanates from him at last, just before he grabs me and hurls me through the air like a ragdoll.
I sigh as my back slams into a tree, my bones cracking before I slide to the ground, my vision swimming. A cloying stink fills my nostrils, and I blink at the blood on my nails.
I managed to scratch him.
And the blood—it’s black and it reeks.
I lift my head just in time to see Melody swinging that Nefarian sword at him. Again and again. Hitting nothing but air.
Whatever this is—it’s not Caryan. How could I not sense the missing thrum of his power? Or the absence of his smell, so damn elusive and enticing my fucking mouth waters.
The creature shifts and its skin splits open, revealing a bald, skull-like head, black eyes that are mere slits, and an enormous mouth full of vicious, shredding teeth. A demon from one of the nine hells.
“Your sword won’t save you here, half-blood. Nefarian steel or no. Nothing will,” it growls, still in the voice of Caryan.
How he knows how Caryan’s voice sounds, I don’t even want to contemplate. How he knows so many other things….
“Want to bet?” Melody snarls back, lifting the sword again, unbothered by the terrifying ugliness of that creature. She’s so badass that, for a moment, I just stare.
“Your guilt and pain have been a feast, witch,” the creature hisses at me, without taking its black holes of eyes off Melody. “But now it is time for a special treat. I’m sure your blood tastes sweeter than fairy wine!”
Those teeth snap at Melody. She dodges. Its body flickers again, becoming mist as the sword comes down in a fast blow—before the monster turns solid once more.
A bony hand shoots out and tears the sword from Melody’s grip, then the monster’s other hand closes around her throat.
She thrashes and kicks in vain as she’s lifted into the air.
Just then, silvery light cuts through the darkness—and the demon begins to scream. High, panicked screeches fill the air as the magic starts to tear it apart. Magic that comes pouring out of Melody, flowing in silvery waves over her skin and straight into that demon.
“Light magic! No—there is none of your kind left in this world!” he bleats, trying to get away, but she holds on, her fingers slung around its skeletal wrists while her magic swamps the demon and eats it up bit by bit.
Then, with a last flare of light, the monster is gone. Not even a pile of ashes left.
Melody falls on her knees, panting hard, before she jumps up and comes running over to me. Her face is slick with sweat, but her expression is worried as she takes me in. “Are you alright?”
“Why don’t you just go fuck yourself?” I snap, getting up on my own to keep the miserable rest of my dignity. How much of what the not-Caryan said did she witness? That I’m covered in fucking bog and boar shit from head to toe doesn’t exactly help.
I turn away before Melody can see my face—that it is still flushed. That half-elf can probably read everything in my aura anyway. It makes me want to slap her. With my claws out.
“Blair, you’re hurt—”
I whirl around so fast Melody has no time to react as I grab her by the throat—just like the demon before. Just like I did once in the human world, before things spiraled out of control and all our lives went fucking haywire.
She is slender in my grip. Fragile. Her human-brown eyes are wide with fear.
“Dead girls tell no tales. Breathe one more word about what you saw, girl, and I will snap your scrawny neck. I probably should have done that in the first place. Would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
With that, I shove her off—so violently she stumbles and drops to her hands and knees, remaining there as if she’s too exhausted to rise after the fight and our hellish escape.
I notice that her eyes are red, as if she’d been crying.
I ignore the fact that she just lost her mount, just as I lost mine.
I clamp down on my rising empathy and bare my teeth at her, my silver fangs on show.
She glances up at me with those unusual brown eyes and I snarl.
“That’s not what I meant, Blair,” she says quietly after a moment, dropping her gaze. “You’re bleeding.”
Only then do I look down at myself—at an ugly wound that has soaked the sad leftovers of my riding leathers. I’d been so focused on the demon that I didn’t even realize he cut me with his nails. And that I’m losing a lot of blood.
“Just keep your—”
I freeze as Melody is violently wrenched backward and a man with a mohawk steps out of the trees, his fist tangled in her long strands of hair.