‘But I won’t let you.’
Her thoughts come to me like a toil of murky smoke blowing through my chest, and my frown deepens.
Him …
“I hate you,” she repeats, hissing the words through clenched teeth, and realization hits like a sledgehammer.
Her hate-filled barbs, her glazed eyes …
She’s talking to herself.
My ribs crunch around the heavy thump of understanding.
The world would be so much better if you just disappeared …
I let my weapon fall to the ground, gripping her fist that’s clenched around the pommel of hers. With my other hand, I seize the honed end of her sword.
Her gaze slides to the side, widening, upper lip trembling as wrath twists her beautiful face into a knot. I press, feeling the sharp slice into my palm, enriching the air with the smell of my blood. Thick.
Potent.
Hers.
Nostrils flaring, her brow buckles. She swallows, blinking the glaze from her eyes as they widen, lifting.
Looking right at me.
Terror flashes across those purple gemstones, shattering me to the core.
She stumbles back, her bloody sword thumping to the ground as she looks down at her quivering hands, stretching them, bunching them up. I stay leaning against the tree, breathing deep and hard, watching her sink into the depths—further and further away. Like a star falling from the sky in a tragic blaze of glitter and death.
That’s not for you, Milaje.
“Before you put the talon through my chest, you told me you killed your mother.”
Her head whips up, the roots of her seed squirming in my chest like I just prodded it with a stick.
Her eyes harden to flints, chin lifting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I whisper.
Her gaze fractures like crumbled glass, a faint whimper breaking free.
Her eyes plead for me not to look.
Mine wield the weight of an apology that will never beenoughto lift the guilt ingrained in my soul.
“You didn’t kill her.”
I hear her heart skip a beat, something flashing in her stare that’s gone too fast for me to track. “Wh-what do you mean?”
I look at the jewel hanging around her neck, back to her face, ripping at the grave inside my chest with bare and bloody hands. Knowing I’ll probably never pull her back from what I’m about to say. A terrible truth I’ve held in my chest for far too long.
She’ll never forgive me, but that’s okay.
So long as she forgives herself.
“I used to purchase blood off your mother. Blood I’d use to build obsidian whelves like this one,” I say dashing my hand at the stones.
