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Unable to hold in the pain, I cried out. Unseen claws ripped at my heart until I was certain I’d bleed out. Larsson flipped me onto my back, straddling my hips to keep me confined. Breasts exposed, blood on my chest, I’d never felt so trapped, so suffocated.
Time did not exist. All I knew was the agony, the sorrow. Like poison ripping every joyful moment from my heart, such despondency had never existed before.
Tar and blood in the bowl puffed out a strange smoke until nothing but bits of ash remained, and the pain ceased.
Sweat beaded on the sides of my face. Breaths came rough and sharp.
“It’s gone.” Fione studied the ash, flat and devoid of any care. “It can’t be formed again.”
The same echo of sorrow took hold when the skin below the crook of my elbow was red and irritated, but . . . there was no bind rune. The mark of the House of Kings was gone. They’d robbed me of the bond formed so many turns ago when I’d fallen for the somber boy in a prison cell.
Whatever pieces of Erik had threaded through my heart on that night, now they’d been slaughtered.
CHAPTER SIX
THE SERPENT
“Get up, Bloodsinger.”A Rave warrior used the toe of his boot to nudge my hip from where I’d stumbled out of the great hall, landing on my back on the floor.
Fire blazed through my veins. Fists clenched at my sides, I let out a roar of pain. Not from my leg, not from the scars, not from the kicks and strikes of the earth fae. It was the cry of a shattered heart.
The last time had been the day my mother died. My boyish soul felt as though it might never piece itself back together again when the light faded from her eyes.
This was worse.
A suffocating torment wrapped around my heart, my bones, my very soul. I knew her folk would hate me, they’d want me dead, but I thought—gods—I thought with Alek, with my surrender, they would take to the tides immediately.
I’d done this. Rejected every offer of peace, threatened all my life to return and ruin them, and then I did. I stole their hearts away beneath the sea. I created too great a divide so they could not even unite with me when it mattered most.
I failed her, but I wouldn’t again. Not for another moment.
“I said get up.”
The moment the guard gripped my tunic, I snapped into sitting and curled a fist around his throat, choking off his air.
“Erik!” Tait’s voice was a warning. The guards who had him were coming for me.
They’d be too late.
The warrior in my grasp grappled for my hand, trying to break my crushing hold on his throat. His eyes were wide, face flushed; my grip tightened.
I snatched a small carving knife sheathed to his hip and slashed the flesh over the top of my wrist. The warrior made a grunting sound at the sight of my blood spilling over my skin onto the stones. Some drops landed on the warrior’s fatigues.
Teeth bared, I leveraged back to standing, and spun the guard in front of me, the same way I’d done to Livia the night I took her. With the bloodied tip of the knife aimed at my new captive’s face, his fellow warriors halted five paces away, hands out in a show of tense peace.
“Bloodsinger,” said the warrior nearest to us. “What is your plan? You are surrounded here.”
“My plan?” Darkness robbed any hint of compliance, of compromise, from my tone. “My plan is to take to the sea. My blood can kill the lot of you in moments. Release me and my cousin, and we will go. No lives lost.”
“You attacked us, Bloodsinger. You took a royal. You know we cannot let you walk away.”
“She took me.” My voice rattled against the sconces, the doors. Each passing breath robbed me of my sanity a little more. I did not care if I descended to the depths of the hells, I did not care if it made my soul black in the process. “She owns me. I will not go into a cell to wait. I’ll die first, then I shall still search for her from the Otherworld.”
“Put the blade down.” Steig stepped from the great hall and glared at me. “Don’t take the wrong steps here, Erik. Not again.”
“I will do every wrong and wicked thing if it brings her back.”
I flipped the knife, so the blade pointed back at me, and with a few clever moves of my fingers, had the sharp edges gripped in my palm. I squeezed until bubbles of my blood fountained through my clenched fingers.
