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April 18 - August 22, 2024
No child should be forced to bear that weight.
I notice. Feel her fear in the pit of my soul like a torched tree. It makes me want to rip the fucking world to shreds. Makes me want to kill.
YESSSSSSS
I can’t tell who’s the bigger monster. Him. Or me.
“She’s Aeshlian. Aravyn’s child. She’s … got a black mark on her shoulder that doesn’t look natural.” Light will bloom from sky and soil, Skin tarnished by the brand of death
Imagining Rhordyn’s body wrapped around me, twisting me up in the ways I hate to love. Such a poisonous thought.
Truth is, I fell in love with a ghost. Now I’m gone and still ... haunted.
In a dash of snow and stolen breath she’s straddling me, weight pressed on my aching length, blade kissing my throat, teeth bared and eyes flashing. My breath snags at the feral look in her eyes. She leans so close I can feel her warm breath against my ear before she whispers, “Don’t ever play that game with me again. Do you understand?” I swallow, rolling the ball in my throat, forcing my skin to nick against her blade. A dribble of warmth spills down my neck, and the air around us flushes with the scent of my blood.
IM NOT OKAY
I gesture to the pickaxe. “That diamond right there? I mined it myself.” Body straightening, the man lifts his head, slowly glancing down his nose at the dainty tool in his white-knuckled fist. “A lump of it as big as your head,” I say, pretending to weigh it in the palm of my hand. “Carved it into three small tools and gifted them to someone special.”
Someone who needed to see that beautiful things don’t have to be breakable.
Little does he know, I’m much worse than the monster he glorifies. “Do you know who dished out those deadly sentences?” A sob bursts from his trembling lips as he folds into a pathetic, snotty knot at the wall’s base. I rip my dagger from the sheath at my hip. Smell him piss himself. “Me.”
Her face twists with a fury so potent I taste it on my next breath. “I’m not your problem anymore. I don’t want your charity.” Never my problem. Always my tragic ever after. “It’s not charity, Milaje.” I step forward.
Little does she know, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Except let her go.
It brought me a twisted sense of satisfaction to watch him bleed for me. I wanted more. I wanted to rip into his throat with my teeth. Taste him as he dribbled from my lips. The thought shocked me. Frightened me.
Just that one catastrophic moment blazing like a single star in an otherwise empty sky.
won’t determine your steps, Milaje. I’ll even let you trip. But I refuse to let you fall.”
“There is nowhere you can hide. Nowhere you can go. Even if this were to stop beating,” he says, threading his hand over my rioting heart, “I’d follow.”
“But I’ll let you trip, Milaje. Because it’s those trips that spark your flame—something you’re going to need in this cruel, greedy world that has no fucking mercy, because it doesn’t think before it chews.” Neither do I.
Promising yourself to another shouldn’t mean you lose yourself in the process.
My heart smashes a brand-new rhythm when I realize I want this. To take back the power I’ve lost over my body simply because two powerful men can’t play nicely with each other. For once in my life—for this tiny, selfish moment—I want to bleed for myself.
Show yourself to the wrong person, and you’ll be hacked into pieces. Sold on the black market.
“You are light, my love. Light and life and all that is good.” He sets his hands around mine, his touch warm and grounding, palms smooth. “That is what you cling to.”
“I don’t understand,” I admit, and she points to the child’s leg. To the birthmark—a love heart. Same color. Same spot. My birthmark … My heart lurches, breath hollows. Her warm, soft hand comes up to cup my cheek. “Viola …” It’s whispered. The word such a gentle thing passed to me in a shaken voice. “Viola,” she repeats, and I let my eyes lift, landing in the wide, hopeful, lilac pools of hers. “Her daughter—” Gun starts, voice cracking. He clears his throat as my focus shifts past Della to his troubled stare. “My niece. She, ahh, contracted the Blight as an infant. Della was only eighteen at
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Still, he holds me as though he’s afraid that by letting go, I’ll shatter again. I didn’t deserve to be put back together in the first place. Not after everything I’ve done. I wish you’d let me die that day.
To admit that we’re a disaster in slow motion. Existing on a fault line destined to split. No ... What I regret is letting her believe she doesn’t hold my cold, crippled heart in the palm of her hand. Because she does. She always will.
I can’t think. Can’t breathe. Can’t stop staring at his big, bright smile—much the same as Gael’s. A man who loved his daughter. Who climbed fruit trees with her and gave her all of her best memories … Then took my brother from me.
We’re sisters in death—both victims of the same tragic end that changed our lives forever. Took from us the people we loved most. Her papa took my brother from me. I took her papa from her. In a way, I took her mother, too.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy who had everything,” I rumble, then kiss the tip of her thumb. “Until someone he cared about found an unbreakable love that broke her.”
Tipping his hood, I’m exposed to the full brunt of his savage beauty. To his eyes—a catastrophic mix of hunger and hell.
“Just so we’re clear, Milaje, I will never ask someone else to carry you.”
“I told you not to—” “Breathe in your direction,” he mumbles, carving off a large shard of peel, spritzing the air with its zesty freshness. “I know. I had my face pointed the other way the entire night. Promise.”
“I cut you—” “I don’t give a fuck,” he growls,
He doesn’t blink or flinch. “I’d strike the fucking world down for you.” All breath escapes me. “Rhordyn, no …” “I told you I won’t let you fall, and I’ve drawn that line in the stone,” he growls, warfare waging across his savage expression.
“And then the Unseelie discovered Aeshlian blood.” The words rip my stare forward. “So potent and packed full of light,” he continues, “that it brought forth a swell of power more catastrophic than anyone could have ever imagined.”
“A full-blooded Unseelie needs blood to survive. Daily.”
He taught me to bleed so beautifully. I wonder … will he bleed for me?
a brutal beauty that feels lethal to look upon, like he’s borne from the dark space between the stars that bears no life. A hollow, never-ending blackness. An eternal fall I just slipped into.
“My name is Serren,” I whisper, and he spins. There’s a sorrow caught in his eyes as they begin their gentle fade from black to the familiar, safe silver.
