My chest becomes so crowded with wild weeds of emotion that each breath feels choked, and I struggle to remember the reasons why I’m biting down on words like crunching glass. Why I’m wrestling my morals into a wrangled knot while I wear the stoic face of a woman I’m beginning to hate.
The little red-haired girl still caged in that burrow—the way she flinched when I reached between the bars and cupped her cheeks.
The male lying dead on the ground, his flat stare seeking the shaft of moonlight spearing down from above.
A terrible realization settles upon my shoulders …
I have no choice. I have to sow more death into my already sullied conscience.
I have to play thefuckingpart.
I drop inside myself, gather a wobbling stack of crystal shells, then begin untangling the mangled mess of my emotions trailing through the patchy carcasses of my untended domes. I corral them back where they belong, slam new domes into place, then pull a deep, shuddering inhale.
Breathe, Orlaith. Find a quiet place inside and chase the silence.
Baze’s words come to me from the past, and I steady my grip on the weapon, lifting it, looking down the line of the arrow and past the blazing tip. My gaze doesn’t land on Vanth but on a broad-shouldered male in the crowd behind him swathed in a royal-blue cloak, arms crossed and face hidden within the shadow of his hood.
My heart leaps, then stumbles over a foray of frantic beats.
I don’t have to see his features to know who it is. To remember the torment roiling within his eyes before I turned my back and left him lying on the sand, broken and beaten with his scars on display, desperately trying to cover himself.
Baze …
Part of me wants to run to him. To beg him to drag me away from this hell, kicking and clawing at his skin while I struggle to scream—because he knows better.
He always does.
The rest of me wants to tuck into a ball and hide from the man who taught me how to use a bow, now watching me point one at a person trussed against a log with a wet patch blooming at his crotch.
“Your hands are shaking …”
Cainon’s voice pierces my thoughts, and I’m reminded that there’s a predator standing behind me. A predatorBazehas a prickly history with.
I should have your head for that, boy.
My insides flinch at the chilling echo of Cainon’s words—almost a promise.
One wrong move could spur Baze to do something stupid that draws attention to himself. Gets him hurt.
Killed.
That sizzling darkness slithers free of the chasm inside my chest, and I feel it worming beneath my skin like fiery eels. A deadly promise of its own.
Swallowing, I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin, shifting my gaze back to the pyre. If I pretend he’s not here, not watching, then I won’t draw any attention to him. I won’t have to look myself in the eye and see how much I’ve changed.
See the monster I’ve become.
“Orlaith?”
“I’m fine,” I say—a pretty lie for my poisonous, shameful truth.
Cainon steps to the side, and I pull my arm farther back, the fletching brushing my ear. The flaming tip dances in the wind, my hair doing the same as I catch Vanth’s wide, aching stare.
His lips move, muttering something overshadowed by the woman’s howling screams.
I fail to force my heart to slow, remembering the broken look in Vanth’s eyes after he shot his brother through the heart. The way he drank from that bottle of liquor as though he truly believed it was going to burn the blood off his hands.
I remember the way he growled at me toscream—like my own pain was the only remedy for his own.
