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My fingers flex into fists as the first figure lowers her hood, and none other than Blaise stares back at me.
“You.”
It’s as good of an accusation as I can come up with as heat boils in my head, threatening to burst the capillaries lining my skull.
I’ve always blamed my anger on my Flame and Rajeen. But now that my Flame is gone and I’ve discovered my true heritage, I know better.
It’s just me.
It’s always been me.
Blaise opens her mouth to say something, but I get to her first.
I’m not really sure how it happens, how I outpace her and her companion. I suppose it’s just the rage rolling through me.
But I blink, and then I’m pinning Blaise to the wall by her throat.
The instinct for survival flashes in her eyes. Fangs jolt from her gums, but as fast as she is with her vampirism, she’s not fast enough.
Not when my skin has a grip on hers.
There’s something about being bereaved of my Flame that feels unjust when it comes to destroying the female who betrayed Asha, who left my wife drained of blood on a battlefield, handed her over to the male who threatens her with his body nightly.
I should be able to make her burn.
But then again, burning is only a single feeling, an isolated sensation.
There’s so much more I can do with the magic that remains. The magic my father didn’t know to take.
Blaise’s fangs flash, but I’m faster, as I unleash every bit of fear I’ve ever experienced from my fingertips, allowing it to seep into Blaise’s flesh.
Her already pale face drains of its last flecks of color, her brown eyes bulging wide as I unleash dread upon her.
Her companion bellows in anger, but I can’t make out his words, not with the rage buzzing in my mind. All I hear is the muffled sound of a scuffle as Fin and Lydia hold him back.
There’s a flare of light behind us—Lydia’s fire, I suppose, but it’s hardly anchoring me to the present.
Not when all my attention is on Blaise.
It’s the fear of Rajeen that I release on her first. The dread of a child at the hands of his angry father’s drunken whippings. The trepidation of his father catching him in the act of weeping. The boiling tears that mar his face.
I give it to Blaise, who whimpers, her compact frame shaking underneath me.
Next, I give her the fear of when my mother took the blame for the time I broke the banister in a fit of anger, and my father made me watch as he beat her.
Tears stream from Blaise’s eyes, but they’re not boiling her skin, as they did mine, so I decide that’s not enough.
I give her the fear of losing my relationship with Fin, the night Ophelia tried to seduce me, and when that isn’t enough, the fear I felt as I watched Calias unleash waves upon Asha and Fin, drowning the two people I cared most for in the world. And even though there’s a faint awareness in the back of my mind that I’m at fault, I give her Tavi, force Blaise to share in the guilt of that innocent female’s death, the feel of her warm blood sticking to our fingertips.
Blaise’s lips murmur something that looks like it might be a plea, but the noise in my ears is swallowing me now, drowning everything out.
So then I give her the moment the palace doors opened, and out walked Asha in a wedding gown and that dreadful mask.
“No.” Blaise cries out this time, and it’s my own anguish I hear as she weeps for Asha, weeps for my wife.
Every moment I’ve laid awake, my mind racing with the possibilities of what Az might be doing to her, I funnel into Blaise. Every wicked imagining that haunts my waking moments, every sick machination that twists my dreams into nightmares.
Blaise’s eyes go wide. The weeping stops, and for a moment she seems paralyzed.
