“If you kill me!” a voice rings out. “You kill her!”
My gaze snaps toward the sound. One of the men yanks someone from the shadows. A woman, her body limp, her face obscured by tangled brown hair, her knees shaking.
Theron skids to a halt mere steps away from them. His body is ready to strike, but he does not move.
They have a hostage. The Healer.
A broken cry erupts. Gregor. He collapses to his knees, his fingers clutching at his hair, his entire form racked withsomething beyond fear. “STOP!” he screams. “JUST STOP! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! KILL HER! KILL ME! KILL EVERYONE!”
It is the desperate, unhinged wail of a man who has lost all grip on reason.
“Gregor!” The woman’s voice shatters the night. She thrashes in her captor’s grasp, struggling against his hold.
The gleam of my blue flames flickers over her light brown hair, similar to his. A relative, perhaps? A sister? It doesn’t matter. She is the healer from the prophecy, and no more related to this dead man. I pulse through my crystal to Theron. In ablink, it is done. Three men. Gregor. Orïon. Kneeling before me.
Theron stands behind them, a shadow of judgment. The nýmphí understand without words, and they dart forward to cut the healer free. She screams Gregor’s name. Her cries echo through Ávera’s forests.
“Three ways to go against me, and all of them kneel at my feet.” I raise my bleeding hand and close it into a fist. The chains around Orïon shatter, and he collapses to the ground, gasping, freed at last. Gregor shudders.
Tilting my head, I consider him. He looks sosmallnow. My boots are silent against the bloodstained earth as I step forward to grab him by the throat and lift him to his feet. His pulse thrashes beneath my palm. “I will take your life for all the lives you stole.” My voice is ice, my grip tight. I tilt my head to the other side, and whisper, “And for mine as well.”
Gregor’s hollow, defeated eyes stare into mine, veins bulge from his skin. He swallows. A broken, pitiful sound escapes him. “I... I never wanted any of thi—”Crack.His body goes limp. I let him fall. The earth swallows him whole.
Now, the others. I turn to the three men still kneeling. “Which one of you killed me?”
The man in the center draws my attention, his lips stretching into something like a smirk, arrogant and too wide. “I did.” He tilts his head, studying me like a child amused by a toy he’s already broken. “And you’re even more of a tyrant than your father.”
“Ándor wasn’t a tyrant, you fool.”
At that, he laughs. A wild, fractured sound that echoes across the silent land. “Look at you!” he gasps between chuckles, his shoulders shaking. “A vólkin whore, exactly like your mother was!”
Theron’s growl rumbles behind him. His claws flex, his breathing sharp.
The man doesn’t stop. He doesn’t care. He leans forward, spitting poison with every word. “You think Ándor was your father?” He snorts and his voice turns cruel. “Eyleen didn’t tell you? What a poor, lost child. Eyleen could’ve had a lavish life, the tsar’s cock buried inside her every night. Instead, she ran pregnant into the forest like some pathetic wretch!”
A snarl tears from Theron as he grips the man’s head, but the man just grins, his teeth bared like a wolf scenting blood.
“How dare you speak with such hatred for females?” Theron growls, clenching his claws and drawing blood from the man’s forehead.
“No. He doesn’t hate. He’s afraid,” I answer my mate. “He’s afraid of women.All of them are.” I study the man’s face. “That’s why you try to make us small, keep us in the kitchen or in bed. Make us whores or mothers. And when we express our feelings, you call us hysterical. When we are strong, you call us whores. And when we seek power, you say, ‘No, that’s not feminine.’” I lean in, and my voice drops. “But what truly scares you... is not that we won’t be feminine. It’s that you will not be masculine enough.” My crystals pulse, and I see my own pale eyes reflected in his.
“Come on, little girl! Kill me!” His voice rises, mockery and madness laced in every word that comes out of his mouth. “A child playing god with vólkins at her feet. Did you really think you were different? You think you stand against the tsar?!”
His smile stretches even wider. Unnatural. His eyes gleam as he delivers his final words. “You’re going mad.” A pause. A breath. “You are just like him. Or even worse.”
My heart pounds, fury roars through my veins. The earth stirs. Blood pools beneath his knees, a crimson bloom spreading through the dirt.
He chokes on his laughter.
Thorned blue roses sprout from his own blood, curling out of his body, tearing his flesh. They twist, wrapping tight, tighter, until they snap his spine like a brittle twig. Eyes bulging, mouth frozen in an unfinished laugh, his head tilts back??—
Then, it detaches.
His body collapses. The other two men follow, their screams hardly leaving their lips before the roses claim them too. And then silence. I lift my gaze, staring into nothing.
The battlefield fades, the blood, the bodies, the silence, all of it slips into the background as the pieces fall into place. I see it now.
She waspregnant. That’s why she ran. That’s why she fled the stronghold. To protectme.Two mates can’t be unbonded for more than six moons.
