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I had no opportunity to fight for a chance to speak. The world blurred. The castle hallway was around me now, and the building shook in protest of my presence.
Alaric’s presence.
Ours.
But even that changed nothing. Servants bowed and hid their gazes from mine. They jolted with alarm and then screamed as monsters flooded through the gate behind me.
I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t change anything as they died.
But they were supposed to die to serve me. They should have risen again as my servants, my army…
“You’ve seen enough, pet.” The darkness grew thicker, taking on weight like a suffocating blanket drawing between me and the world. “There’s nothing left for you now.”
The pressure of the dark was familiar. Was this what he had done to make time skip? It was like a thousand pounds of black cotton smothering me and stealing away the world. I couldn’t rail against it. Couldn’t shove it away.
Light faded, my tunnel view of the world becoming only darkness. Screams whisked away as if blown by a breeze, leaving echoing silence.
I would not disappear.
No, I refused.
I…
Any sense of my body faded away. My mind slowly forgot even the memories of sensation. Of expression. Of existence beyond this dark, empty world of horror.
Because horror it was. Not mere nothingness or petty cruelty. No, this was the essence of the worst moments of my life made manifest. This was the day my father thought I wasn’t worth keeping, only for trading to get him a cow. The day the Jeweled Coven’s testing proclaimed I was too weak to ever become a real witch.
The days when others thought I was nothing.
No one.
Just the greasy, unwashed daughter of a drunken farmer, all alone in the dark.
And Alaric had finally won.
26
ROAN
One moment, I was in a city trying not to kill everyone while a dragon did its best to burn the whole place down, and then suddenly I was standing naked on a stone tower hundreds of feet in the air, freezing my damn dick off in the winter breeze with no idea how I’d gotten here or where here even was.
And Gwyneira was glaring at me.
Every other consideration vanished. Oh gods, what had I done?
Fragmented memories flickered past. Gwyneira trying to save that woman and the kids. The dragon landing in front of us, clearly intent on killing everyone. Me begging the princess to run, to save herself.
And then…
Horror gripped me, making my insides roll with nausea. Then the demon took over, and before I could stop myself, I’d shifted.
Right in front of her.
I couldn’t breathe as I strained to remember what came next, but everything after that moment was blurry. I knew I’d tried to stop the demon from taking control. Tried to protect Gwyneira from the thing I was. But the demon wasn’t about to let some fire-breathing lizard murder the woman we loved, and when it saw the danger she was in, I hadn’t stood a chance. It attacked the dragon and won—because of course it had—and then…
Then…
The blank blur of my memories made me want to howl, and inside my mind, the demon huddled, giving me nothing. But the closer I came to the present moment in my efforts to remember, the more pain and anguish and confusion came from the monster inside.
