Aran #2
In my peripheral vision, Sadie whispered something to Lucinda. From what had happened in the arena sands, the race wasn’t lost anymore.
Sadie was a blood fae. A race so rare and ancient that they were more myth than real, which meant Lucinda was most likely one too.
Their ancestors were the skulls that made up the seat of death. Slaughtered by a power-hungry monarch.
I was now that monarch.
My vision kaleidoscoped until the car spun around me, and my head floated into a different dimension.
I was now the queen of a realm I loathed.
Ruler.
Obligated to the people.
The powerless princess who’d had no predilection for a fae element. My back hurt unmercifully, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
I was more comfortable masquerading as a boy. It was the only time people didn’t ask to breed me, didn’t look at me like I was an object.
Royalty was intense in the fae realm.
They revered rulers like gods.
Since it was extremely rare for an immortal fae to give birth. My status as the first fae princess in eons was no exception. I was an object of veneration: more than a fae, but less than a person.
And yet I’d never developed a predilection for a fae element. In all recorded history, every fae had shown signs of their abilities as a young child.
There were no exceptions.
I was a dud.
Instead, I housed a monster.
Sun god, Sadie was an alpha shifter, and even she was part blood fae. She was more fae than I was.
Yet I was supposed to rule on the throne of death, for all my immortality? I’d be slaughtered by a challenger immediately.
Brutally.
I should have just turned myself over and let them end me. But I was a coward, and I’d fled, too afraid to accept the escape of death.
The worst part about everything that had transpired was I didn’t regret it. If I could turn back time, I would do it again.
Did it make me a bad person, that I wasn’t mad about destroying my mother’s immortal life by consuming her beating heart like a savage animal? Of course it did.
I smushed my face harder against the window.
The worst part wasn’t my lack of regret.
It wasn’t the why.
It was the how.
It was the steel cage that slammed against my soul and the monster that bellowed to be released.
When Sadie had knelt in front of Lothaire and infected my mother with her blood, the icy darkness inside my soul had become an inferno of malice.
It had overwhelmed me until my vision had become tinged with darkness and the entire world had been dipped in sepia tones: dark yellow, burnt orange, blood red.
The colors of rage.
The colors of my monster.
Even as I gnawed on my lower lip and pressed my face against the cool glass, I could taste my mother’s anguish, her gore still on my lips.
I liked it now.
I’d liked it then.
Under the scorching suns, the darkness in my soul had swelled, and for the first time in my life, I’d willingly let my monster out of its cage.
My clean, neatly trimmed fingernails had elongated into razor-sharp claws. A sheen of ice had formed around them and hardened into serrated edges.
I didn’t know how I knew, but there was certainty in my bones that there was nothing sharper in the universe.
Without hesitation, I’d stabbed through my mother’s back and ripped out her beating heart.
As I’d consumed her, a swell of satisfaction had burned through my veins.
Nothing had ever felt so right .
Like extinguishing her darkness was the best thing I’d ever done.
Euphoria.
For a moment, a male had spoken like he was standing behind me. “I approve.”
His praise had been a shot of euphoria straight into my blackened soul. But when I’d turned around, no one was there. I’d had to swallow the urge to laugh from the sheer bliss of it all.
I’d been hallucinating.
Ironically, the situation was heinous for so many reasons.
One of them being that no fae had claws. Ever.
But I did.
Until this moment, I’d never thought about my lack of a father. Who or what he was hadn’t mattered. Some fae male who’d had the terrible judgment of procreating with my mother.
All I’d known was her abuse. She’d provided enough of a parental experience for me to know that I didn’t need another one.
Now I wondered just what the hell he was. What was I?
My back burned unbearably.
As I contorted and dug my nails across my skin, a part of me hoped the claws would erupt again and that I would score my flesh.
I couldn’t be queen. I fucking refused.
A wet, sticky substance trickled across my fingers, and I looked down at my hand. I’d scratched so hard with my blunted nails that blood dripped off them.
My vision blurred.
Suddenly, my mother’s heart was in my mouth, and a million fae fell to their knees.
The echo of fae prostrating themselves before me would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.
They bowed to me because, under fae law, I was their ruler.
The seat of death was my throne to defend.
The longer I stared at my bloody hand, the more the neon steel beasts outside growled. The more my monster rattled against its cage.
Rain slashed against the window as the wind shrieked.
For the first time in my life, I passed out.