Page 133 of Black Sea

I needed to stick my fingers inside me to remove every trace of his seed and rinse my mouth until the taste of his blood was gone from my tongue.

“Make it quick,” Araton told me before closing the door.

But I couldn’t do it, because as soon as I stood in front of the mirror above the sink in my bathroom, all stone and wood, I found myself staring at my reflection for what felt like an eternity.

Without making a sound.

Without the slightest grimace.

I was so ugly. Just like the beasts that the Abomination’s dark arts had generated. Black threads moved sinuously through the broken capillaries around my eyes, giving me the impression that I had been infected by microscopic worms that wandered undisturbed just beneath my skin.

Devouring all the grace the Spirits had granted me.

Tears began to run down my cheeks again. Mornon picked one up with his thumb, making me flinch. I knew he wasn’t physically there with me, that he was only in my head, yet I could still feel the warmth of his body behind me.

Suddenly furious again, I watched his reflection in the mirror as he sucked the tear from his thumb with a gaze so lustful that it made me feel disgusted.

A disgust directed only at myself.

I quickly moved away from the mirror, tied my hair into a tight knot, and took a cold shower, praying to banish the burning memory of how, in the illusion I’d had before, he had bent down to suck and bite my nipples while he possessed me.

Mornon’s deep, cruel giggle made me close my eyes and press my forehead against the wall, my shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

Because that was Amlach’s same deep, mellow laugh.

Yet it wasn’t. At all.

Maybe that’s why, when I opened the closet to choose what to wear, I pulled out one of the simple gray organza dresses—adorned with gold embroidery along its modest square neckline and long bell sleeves—that I had worn during the mourning period for my brother’s mate.

I had lost the one who had gone from being an adversary to my ally, then my friend and protector, and finally my lover.

And soon I would find a way to kill my mate.

75

The large oak doors of the throne room closed slowly behind us. Araton turned halfway toward me, as if to say something, but, unable to look me in the eye, he gave up and walked to our parents, who sat on the two raised thrones at the back.

Alone, I tried to hold the gazes of our long-silver-haired druids and the old, black-skinned witches, who, standing in two lines, respectively in their light and dark robes, had created a tunnel leading to the rulers.

“Come forward, Princess Nauriel,” Queen Aloiv urged me, standing to my father’s right.

Her throaty voice resonated so loudly that the wrought-iron-floral-decorated windows on the three walls of the high-star-vaulted-ceiling hall slightly vibrated.

Outside, the forest was tinged with the violet hues of twilight as the first nocturnal animals began to poke their heads out of their burrows, their small eyes captivated by the bright glow of the flames in the many braziers lining the room’s perimeter.

I advanced across the gray marble floor with my head slightly bowed, letting the front locks of my hair fall to the sides of my face and partially hide its monstrosity.

No one commented on my appearance as I walked past, and somehow, that silence seemed more judgmental than a whisper.

When I reached the steps, I took a deep breath and looked up stoically.

Father looked as if he wanted to set fire to the Lands of the East to flush out Mornon the Abomination and make him pay for how he had reduced me. Instead, Mother stared at me as if petrified, her eyes wide and filled with sadness and a sense of guilt so great that I had to repress the urge to throw myself into her arms to assure her she was not responsible for any of this.

It was entirely my fault.

Standing at her side, Araton placed one hand on her shoulder, and she squeezed it to find the strength to stay still on the throne of stone and wood.

Behind me, elves and witches gradually assembled in a semicircle, blocking all escape routes. The darkness within me started to stir, and I instinctively became alert.