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And even Jillian wasn’t a big enough idiot to put bleeding heart blossoms in her skirt pockets.
“So thirsty,” she whined, yanking hard on my hair as she hurried ahead to claim a spot on a fallen tree. I hissed a curse at her, tucking the loose hair back into its braid. Fucking child.
“How large is this labyrinth?” Darnell murmured to himself, peering up at the hedges as another harpy swooped by.
Oddly, we hadn’t seen a single animal or anything that I’d qualify as magic - just plant after plant after plant.
“Send me some water,” Jillian screeched to the noble on his back, but the harpy just kept flying.
“They don’t care about you,” I told her.
“They care less about you,” she shot back, flashing her fangs at me.
“They should be pandering to me, because I’ll kill every last one of them when I win the Trial,” I returned.
She lashed out with a tiny knife I hadn’t noticed, nicking my wrist before I blocked it.
“Fucking bitch!” I growled.
A little moan escaped her lips as she ran her tongue across the blade, tasting the drops of my blood there.
I edged away from both of them, sealing the wound quickly with my tongue. Bloodlust among teammates was the last thing I wanted - neither of them were anywhere near as hot as Kassian.
“You taste even better than your blood slave,” Jillian continued, and I fixed her in a stare of pure hatred. Rising, I stalked toward her, my mind cycling through all the ways to hurt her without killing her. But she danced away, cooing obscene things about Jax.
“Can’t you two fucking control your-”
Darnell’s words were cut off by Jillian’s scream, and I hadn’t even made contact.
She’d tripped over something on the ground, reached for the hedge to keep her balance, and grabbed hold of a glittering silver mirror vine.
I almost laughed when I saw how the sparkling shards had sliced her hand to ribbons, but a fierce growl from Darnell made me look his direction.
Fuck. He was in the bloodlust already.
“Get a fucking handle on yourself,” I snarled, getting right up in his face with my knives crossed at his neck. His fangs gleamed as he snapped at me and tried to lunge around me to get to her. But as much as I would have loved to see the two of them kill each other, I needed goddamn teammates for this Trial.
I tackled him to the ground, yelling to Jillian to shut the hell up and deal with it. She whimpered, and I caught a glimpse of her wrapping her hand in her skirt before Darnell flipped me on my back, fangs gnashing barely an inch from my own neck.
I dropped my knives - I couldn’t risk spilling his blood and setting Jillian off, too.
Wrestling him off me, I rammed one knee between his legs and brought my boot swiftly up to his neck, wrenching his arms together over his head while I barely resisted crushing his windpipe.
“Fucking stand down,” I growled, pressing a little harder with each word and edging my ice magic into his mind for good measure.
Damn, it felt good to fight again.
This was what I’d trained for, nearly my whole life, with Grand-mère and dozens of masters at the palace. I may not have aced my princess classes, but I could kill a vampire seven hundred seventy-seven different ways.
Notkilling Darnell was the harder part.
Even as the satisfaction of that thought trickled through my veins, I felt a sudden drop and swirl of realization open up in my mind.
My mother hadn’t been trained like that. None of the Queens I knew of had, either, except my Grand-mère. I’d always assumed she simply took special interest in me, but with the development of these prophecies and the gobbelins, I couldn’t help but wonder...
Had Grand-mère known I would need to fight so much more than most queens usually did?
Had my destiny been lined out in prophecies since I was born?
