The words hit me like a physical blow and my world feels like it's shattering. The edges of my reality crumble inward.
Octavian knew.
He knew.
Every moment together. The gym, my kitchen. Every kiss, every time he looked at me like I was something precious. Everything he told me.
Was any of it real?
Or was I just part of the plan? A mission? A fucking job.
Dammit. I knew it.
The thought makes me want to scream and disappear entirely.
In this moment, dying doesn't even matter anymore.
None of it was true. He never cared at all and I'm left feeling like an idiot who thought I'd maybe fallen in love with a man worth loving.
My eyes burn from the tears.
"Let the ceremony begin!" Cormac's voice booms through the chamber, yanking me back to the present.
The robed figures, along with Cormac, start chanting again, but this time it sounds foreign. I don't understand it. Gaelic or Latin, maybe. Their words twist and curl around me, making it hard to breathe.
They circle closer, moving as one.
I pull at the ropes again, gasping.
One of the figures steps forward and raises a knife into the air.
He mumbles something, another prayer or invocation, and then he grabs my forearm.
"No. Please. Stop, I—" The word dies in my throat.
The blade presses into my skin, and then he starts dragging it, carving into me.
The pain is immediate, white-hot and searing. It radiates up my arm, into my shoulder, into my chest until it feels like my entire body is on fire.
I scream.
The sound rips out of me, raw and primal, echoing off the stone walls.
My blood starts dripping down my skin, pooling beneath my arm.
I turn to look at what he's doing, and I see it.
An M.
The Morrígan's mark.
Tears stream down my face, and I can't stop them, can't control anything anymore.
Then gunfire explodes behind me.
BANG.
Everything breaks.
