AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Three
London
My cheek iscold against the marble floor of my cell, my palms flat against it as I stare through blurry, tear-filled eyes at the mess before me.
If I went off human world time, I would guess I’ve been staring at these fucking walls for several days now, but it only took me one to remember this place. It may have even been this very cell, in fact—someone's idea of a bit of added fun, I’m sure.
The last time I was here I was thrust in front of hundreds and put on trial for my father's crimes.
I was fucking five.
The Queen, my nightmare of a mate’s mom, stood at my side that day, advocated for me in ways I didn’t understand then, and to be honest, I still don’t.
My dad murdered the Gifted in cold blood. Argent people. Stygian people. People on the Royal Court and many more. He didn’t have a type.
He killed anyone he felt like killing when he felt like killing them.
He’s a legend of the worst kind.
Either way, a merciful, soft queen would recognize a child is a child and what her four-hundred-and-fifty-five-year-old father—who looked like a Russian mobster in his prime up until the day he was executed—had done had nothing to do with his little girl.
But Queen Cosima is no merciful, soft queen. She’s the complete opposite.
So why did she speak on my behalf that day? Did she know Knight and I were mates? Was it because her daughter was my best friend?
I think back to my father.
Russian mobster.
If my throat wasn’t dry from lack of fluids and my mind didn't feel like it was a construction zone in the city, I would laugh at that. Bet he’d put a dagger through his own heart if he heard such a “giftless” term. I don’t remember much about my dad, but I could never forget his hate for humans. Well, now that I actually fucking remember my life before I was London.
Unfortunately, I have my murderous mate to thank for that.
I hate you, Knight Deveraux.
I swear a little voice in the back of my mind whispers,I hate you too.
Clenching my eyes shut a moment, I reopen them.
I’ve been lying here for who knows how long, and the tears won’t stop. They puddle beneath me, the salty taste seeping into the corner of my lips and their cracked edges, but I don’t feel the sting. Just as I don’t feel the shards of glass sticking from my skin from several failed attempts at scooping Ben’s ashes into a pile, but all I managed to do was make a bigger mess of everything. It doesn't help that they’re inches from my face, and so with every shaky breath I take, they disappear a little more.
There’s a hollowness in the center of my chest, a fucking pit of darkness I can’t escape, and I wish it would swallow me whole already. End me. I also wish I could say it’s all for Ben, because in my mind it is, but I’m not just a human girl who only has a heart and a head to deal with.
No, I’m Gifted. Saddled with something deeper that only makes sense to others like me. Where a part of me literally belongs to someone else, just as that someone else belongs to me. To find that person and not have them … to have them and then lose them, it’s the worst kind of torture.
For the Giftless, broken hearts can mend, but a literal torn soul? Not so much. I hate him.
I hate how bad my entire being aches for him.
It's disgusting.
Ben’s fear-filled gaze pops into my head, and I scream, jerking a moment later when the ashes fly around from the gust of my shouts.
“Fuck!” I wipe my snotty nose, scrambling to my knees and swiping my hands across the floor, only the ashes stick in random spots from my tears and more.
“Dammit!” I panic. If I knew how to use my magic, this wouldn’t be an issue. I could conjure something or cast a spell or who knows! Maybe my power was the art of cleaning, and I could save all I have left of Ben.
But I can’t do that, and I don’t know the extent, or lack thereof, of my magic because the Deverauxs took that from me. Maybe I should be grateful I wasn’t murdered the second Temperance was, that someone, somewhere dared to cross them, to spare me, but I'm not.
