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“The time for threats is over.” She moved around the table, drawing closer to me. I poised to fight, balling my fists at my side. “Do you know what I’m best known for?”
“Being a whore!” I spat.
“Compulsion. I’d really hoped you would kill Elizabeth on your own, but you proved you can’t let her go. Else she’d be dead already. So now we do this my way.”
My chest heaved as she cupped my cheeks, her gaze latching deep into mine. Desire moved between us, tendrils of a need to impress her curling into my coil. I struggled, trying to get free of her stare, pinning me to the spot, but I couldn’t move. “You are going to get Elizabeth.”
“No,” I spat, but my body moved of its own accord toward the door. “I won’t.”
“You will go to her and bring her to the forest immediately.”
The command took hold of everything in my mind, forcing back the visions threatening to crash over me like a wave from Azia’s teas. “No.”
“Yes,” she asserted. “Then, when you bring her into the forest, you’re going to kill her.”
My eyes widened. “No, I won’t do it.” I wrestled with my thoughts, as if I was split in half, but the half wanting to suddenly kill Elizabeth grew stronger.
“Bring her to me,” she said, placing her hand on my chest. “Then kill her at the altar. Today, I will go back to my original form.”
“No!” I shouted, cradling my chest, but I walked toward the door anyway, as if I had no power of my movements. I wrestled with the compulsion, desperately wanting to break free of it, but it was as if my free will was in chains, tied up somewhere at the back of my mind. Salenia’s words planted in my mind, like seeds, growing until they took over.
I had to kill Elizabeth.
THIRTY-ONE
Niall
Iwalkedtowardherroom, every step feeling like an eternity as I tried to stop myself. I tried to throw myself against a wall to render myself unconscious, but I kept walking. No matter how much I wanted to stop.
I pounded on her door, praying she wasn’t in there.
The door swung open, and my heart skipped a beat. “Did it work?” she whispered, her voice charged with hope.
I grabbed her arm, pulling her from the room. I glanced at her pajamas, sighing as I dragged her down the corridor, tears falling down my cheeks. “I have to kill you.”
“What?” her fist connected with my arms, but she was no match for my strength. I should have turned her when I had the chance. My heart broke with every step as I dragged her down the steps. “Niall, stop, no. What happened?”
“Salenia used compulsion on me. She has ordered me to kill you and I can’t stop myself. You need to stab me. Do something.”
I listened as she unsheathed the dagger, but the part of me compelled my Salenia knocked it from her hand. Anything that would prevent me from completing the task, my body responded to stop it. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered as tears fell thick and fast. “try to escape,” I said, but we both knew it would not work.
“Feed me your blood.”
I swallowed thickly. “I can’t.”
“You can. You said she compelled you to kill me, right? Did she say you couldn’t turn me? I mean, thatiskilling me.”
The vision came back of her, surrounded by limbs and blood. Conflict played tug of war with my feelings as I wrestled with the part of myself that didn’t want to damn her soul, yet realizing I had no choice.
It was that or death.
“Fuck!” I shouted, and a bunch of people turned to look at us as we reached the foyer. She needed more than blood; she needed venom.
I bit into my wrist as we walked, my legs unable to stop moving. “Drink now.”
“Slow down.”
“I can’t,” I confessed, my body trembling.
