Chapter 14
Envy.
An emotion I haven’t felt in a long time.
It spreads outward from that dark pit in my stomach, replacing my earlier exhaustion from throwing my body into the Wall over and over. For a brief moment, I’d burn the world down just to have this woman in the flesh before me.
Take in with my own two eyes what I saw through hers. Place my hands where hers just lied.
But it’s only lust—wanting what I can’t have.
The Guardians have already taken everything from me and my family, and now they have her too. She belongs to me. And it’s their fault I can’t see or touch what’s mine.
But rest assured, if she gave me the choice, I’d touch. I’d show her how depraved the world really is—and how pleasurable it can be.
Lucan, she says breathily, likely following the pathways of my corrupted thoughts. I want to fucking consume the way she says my name, her own mind a twist of intrigue and desire that I wish I could wrap up in my fist.
A man has never made her come, I pick out from the tangle of emotions. She’s always had to give herself her own pleasure—always the one to give, never the one to take.
Yet, she wants everything. Knowledge included.
I might not be able to touch her, but I can give her that. I can tell her what really happened five hundred years ago, when the Wall was built and the parasites took their twelve false thrones.
I tip my head up toward the sky from where I slumped down at the sound of her colorful voice, watching as a cloud drifts over the bright crescent moon.
Something about her determination and excitement seems to have healed the echoes of pain that were ringing through me afterward.
Now, despite the weariness settling into my bones from what that pain did to me, I stay in my monstrous form.
And pray she doesn’t leave me as soon as I utter the words that will turn her into a rebel once and for all.
Do you want to learn the truth about your Guardians?