My voice is right—not wrong.
My voice is love.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snap, and realize my hand has clamped down. Orlaith claws at it, mouth gaping, eyes bulging like glass marbles glistening in the firelight. “Mothertalked to me like that.” I tilt my head, lean back, then grip my shirt by the collar and rip, spraying popped buttons.
The yawning front exposes the scar almost directly above my heart. The pale, risen remnants of the moment my own flesh and blood decided the world would be better off without me.
Another bleeding heart.
I remember the look in Mother’s eyes when I woke to that talon sliding through my chest, like she was hurting more thanme.
“She’ll never speak again because her aim wasn’t as good as yours,” I chuff, flashing Orlaith a half smile. “You—on the other hand—put Rhordyn down so beautifully.”
Tears shred down her cheeks.
I let her go, hoping she’ll fall to her knees. Disappointed when she doesn’t.
She folds against the bars, color flooding her face as she coughs and gasps, cradling her flushed throat.
Always fucking fighting me.
“Only because you,”she heaves through swift, serrated breaths, “played me …”
I did.
There was something poetic about manipulating the woman he thought was his into stabbing him through the heart. The woman heloved—I could see it in the fucker’s eyes.
“I had no choice,” I say, serving bite-sized pieces of a truth too big to swallow whole. “He was sniffing too close.”
Her bloodshot gaze nips to Father as she gulps air, clinging to the bars at her back like her spine has been ripped free.
Rhordyn may have spared me years ago when he stormed the palace like Kvath come to weigh my hollow heart. When he lookeddownupon a frightened,powerlessboy with the pathetic blood of my mortal mother flowing through my veins, but failed to notice myfather’sblood warming my soiled heart.
And if he knew I was harboring my bestial, broken father who didn’t quite die during The Great Purge?
“You were the only one who could get close enough to eliminate him.” I step forward and thread my hand up to cup her cheek. “You saved me. Savedhim,” I say, jerking my chin at the man I’d rip myself to shreds to protect.
“Sacrifices,” she sputters.
Again, I drag my hand down her delicate neck, blotched red from my tight grip. “Yes.” My fingers rest upon her carotid, ripe and swollen with fluttering need.
A flame sparks inside my chest, her hot pulse flicking at my fingers, churning faster,faster. Begging me to split her skin.
Set it free.
My throat works as I brush my thumb across her silky, untarnished canvas. “I can’t let you leave, Orlaith.”
The child begins to sob, drawing my gaze toward her frail form. Still she’s looking at me in that same haunting way.
The same wayshelooks at me.
The child releases another whimper, and a growl brews in my chest, fingers itching to tighten around her tiny throat and stem thatfuckingsound—
“I know,” Orlaith whispers, and the air flavors with metallic spice, interrupting my train of thought.
My attention homes on the trickle of blood oozing from Orlaith’s nose, descending over her lips, her chin, the background noise paling in significance to the sudden, aching thirst making the nerves beneath my tongue burst with tingles …
Her lashes sweep shut as I smear it across her lips, painting them red like the night I tasted them for the first time. The night she wore a dress that looked like blood pouring down her curves, puddling around her feet.
