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I dive down to a forest near the edge of a village, sensing her presence as if I’ve known it my whole life. I thought maybe she would head back to Asov and get some rest, but I realize that’s far from what she’s doing as she nears another Corrupted in the night. She’s already got her hands on the cursed male, using her energy to save him. But her faint, white glow begins to lose its flare in the distance.
I stalk closer, seeing how her body starts to waver. Her movements slow. The light of her power flickers as she grunts, pushing another wave of light into the vessel that has been consumed by the evil of her father.
Defining my sight to zoom in on her, I see her eyes flutter and the muscles in her body begin to quiver as she stumbles slightly. She’s exerting herself past her limits. She’ll black out if she keeps going because her body can’t handle the amount of power she’s using in so little time.
Not even a heartbeat later, her eyes roll back right before her body drops to the ground. The Fae in her arms is staring at her in panic, and I can feel his heart beating twice as fast. Without a thought, I rush to her, letting this Fae figure out his way home as I swoop her limp frame in my arms, pulling her in close.
I’ll drop her off in her room without being seen, even though I hate to leave her side again. Fynn is so close to tapping his power into the other realm. Another day or two should be all he needs, and then we can fight together to rid the world of Whiro so she can live her life how she wishes. To be free.
I push open her patio doors when I land, and carefully lay her on her bed. Her breaths are deep, and I slowly brush the hair that fell on her face behind her ear. My fingers can’t resist tracing the bridge of her nose, following the curve of her jaw, before feathering over her pouty lips.
I lower myself, pressing my lips to her forehead, before dropping my head to hers. “Stop fighting your demons alone,” I whisper. The tightness in my chest lessens with the contact of her skin on mine. “You have me.”
It takes every bit of willpower to remove myself from her side to fly home. My wings beat slowly as I war with myself in wanting to turn around and take her with me. To kidnap her while she’s unconscious. And I tell myself it’s only for her safety, but that would be a fucking lie. I can be a selfish bastard when it comes to what I want.
I’ve never wanted something or someone as badly as I do her. Even with how I hold my breath until she looks at me. Or how her saying my name makes me want to drop to my knees and bury my face between her thighs until she screams it. She’s it for me.
And as I fly closer to my home, it gets harder to take a full breath. My lungs constrict and my chest feels tight. The distance is causing the ache in my chest to feel like an anchor pulling tauter with every mile I put between us.
But one day, it will be her and I putting distance between us and the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emma
Screams rip free from my throat. “Tell me, Daughter, who do you obey?
Another whip cuts through another layer of skin, fueling fire to a wound already blazing. I scream again, my cries falling on deaf ears.
“Your screams aren’t an answer, Emma.”
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
I chant in my head, yet the vision before me has me reliving the horrors King Oren inflicted. Another lash of the whip flays my skin, and the blinding pain and blood trailing down my back feels too real.
This is the day that I remember the most. The one that took a piece of me I never got back. The day I became mute to his torment and stopped letting my pain be heard as I bit back every scream.
Suddenly, I’m ripped to another memory of what I endured by his hands and how much he loved slowly carving a knife into every layer of skin. Like I was his very own canvas and my blood was his paint. But I never screamed.
The dream twists and blurs until it brings me to Gehendra. I’m standing there, facing the Fae Whiro told me to kill, who is on his knees before me. The one who already kisses the doorstep to death as his eyes plead with me to save him, but I don’t. And I can’t stop this assault of my past. I’m prey to these memories, a puppet to the truth that this is what I’ve done. The monster I’ve become.
My hands move on their own, following the memory of what I did, killing the Fae by piercing his chest with a shadow hand and holding his heart with it. Crushing it to dust before pushing him off the ledge and into the endless void. I can still feel it. Every beat of his life. The way it swelled as I squeezed tighter before bursting.
Only, this time, I don’t feel the adrenaline I did before. Now my heart sinks, splintered with a million shards of guilt. Innocent lives have been taken by my bare hands, but what’s worse… I had enjoyed it.
My stomach twists as the Fae disappears and I’m pulled into another memory when all I want is to wake from this nightmare.
I jerk upright, gasping with uneven breaths. One moment I was throwing Vincent into the Sea of Souls with his eyes holding mine. When he hit the water, I felt myself falling, and I woke before my body could hit the ground.
My eyes blink rapidly as they try to fully open from waking up so abruptly, but the room around me is a blur. Fisting my hands to rub my eyes, trying to bring myself to focus, but the exhaustion pulling at me is making my eyelids heavy, even though my heart is racing. The sheets are damp and tangled around my legs, and there seems to be a black hole in my mind because I don’t remember returning to my room.
I squint, trying to look out the balcony windows, but only able to note that the sun is setting. Meaning, I slept the whole day away. Scrubbing my hands down my face, I reach around to pull my hair over my shoulder and fix the braid that has become undone.
My head snaps to the soft knock that fills the silence before my door creaks open.
