Page 3 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

A roar builds within my chest, a mindless, raging shout as my heart breaks into a thousand sharp pieces.

Yet into the stillness, I utter only a whisper. “Why?”

Sorley moves within the shadows at the back of the room, pushing himself off the wall, his bloodied hands smearing the paint.

His hair is as icy white as mine, his stature as tall, and his eyes as ghostly gray, but his ears are not pointed.

It happens. A Lethian child born without a Voice.

He shrugs. “I did what I had to do.”

His voice is flat, nothing like our mother’s. Nothing like mine.

The thumps of my breaking heart dominate my hearing, the thunder in my throat pushing upward and gaining power.

My mother. My sister.

They were love and kindness and gentle hope.

They were innocent and used and had no place to hide.

Their voices have been crushed and their eyes are sightless, and all for fucking power and fucking greed.

And even now, my brother seems so wrapped up in the comfort of his own supremacy and his belief that I will remain subservient to him no matter what horror he delivers upon me that he doesn’t seem to understand…

He should fucking run.

“You took them from me.” My voice is no longer my own. Deep and feral. Broken and destroyed.

I inhale, a single breath that makes the air tremble.

Sorley’s eyes fly wide. “You wouldn’t⁠—”

“Die.”

Sorley crumples where he stands, falling to the right and hitting his head on the wooden edge of a nearby chair whose pink upholstery was already splattered with blood.

He slides across the seat, but his head catches in the crook of the circular armrest and his arms end up dangling to the floor.

I don’t pause.

Grabbing one of his feet, I wrench him away from the chair, allowing his head to smack the floor. The sickening crack barely registers through my heart’s pain.

I drop onto his side, my knee hitting his ribs, breaking them.

Pop, pop, pop.

I take another long breath, focusing on the vibrations within my chest and my throat as I form a song my mother wouldn’t teach me, for it is too violent. Too brutal. Too cruel.

A forbidden melody.

But life taught it to me.

For every fae my father put to death. For every cruel game he and his lackeys played. This song is every last breath, and every final heartbeat, and every tear falling down a cold cheek.

I have never sung this song before, but it comes far too easily to the tip of my tongue. A fully formed melody. Sharp, forceful notes that will pin a soul to the dying body from which it flees.

The notes glide from my mouth, crystal clear.