Page 64 of What did you do?
Even the staff were asleep.
I stole a glance over my shoulder to see Mendax confidently striding after me. His mouth was set in a hard, determined line, his ice-blue eyes stabbing into mine.
Anger surged through me as my stomach fluttered. Ihatedhow much it got to me when I heard him tell Walter he loved me and that he’d come to take me back. No one hadeverwanted to take me with them.
Why could nothing ever work out right for me?
I shouldn’t have even been the one to have to kill Mendax. I shouldn’t have ever even been trained as Saracen’s assassin. I should have never let them trick me into giving up my heart.
I was tired of being controlled with lies and manipulation. Maybe all ofthemshould learn what it felt like to die inside.
I stopped running.
Maybe they should all just die.
My smoke flared to life, pouring off my arms the instant I glanced back to lock eyes with Mendax again. A cruel smile pulled at the dimple on his handsome face.
I continued to walk, taking a right down the hallway and barreling through the large doors of the throne room. I looked around at all of the barbaric art surrounding me. The people of the wall murals began to mumble quietly.
My hand went to pull the door shut just as I felt him shadow behind me. My eyes shut at the feel of his body so close. I pretended to be preoccupied with closing the door, as if it was possible for me not to feel how close he was.
My grip tightened around the karambit. Slowly, I moved the sharp point of the blade in the direction of his stomach. A small, controlled breath silently left my mouth. Widening my stance slightly, I leaned my body closer to the door and acted as if I were listening for him on the other side.
As the queen’s assassin, it had been my job to end him, and I had failed. He couldn’t be here. If she found out he wasn’t dead,it meant I would die. And if I died, Eli died—the only person I cared about saving.
“You will leave tonight and return to Unseelie with Walter,” he stated. “I will retrieve your heart and bring it with me after I finish killing each of them for what they’ve done to you.”
Icy breath caught in my lungs, chilling my heated body with a new fear. “You will not hurt them. I still need them. You hurt them, and I will spend every second of the rest of my life trying to kill you,” I promised through clenched teeth.
Mendax stepped toward me with a grin. “What part of that threat was supposed to dissuade me?”
In theory, the Unseelie prince was more powerful than me in every respect, but so was everybody else. I wouldn’t let that stop me. It was kill or be killed, and I would use everything I had.
Knowing the rotation of my torso would have an effective mass far greater than my arms would, I turned quickly. With the proper rotation, I was capable of imparting up to four hundred percent more force into my strike.
Letting out a loud grunt, I slammed the double-edged karambit deep into his shoulder.
The prince fell back as I pulled my weapon free from his body, his blood speckling the floor with black dots and lines.
“I can’t leave with you. I-I won’t. I don’t want you. It’s my heart, and I will get it on my own, and then?—”
The dark silhouette of his body stepped toward me, unfazed by the fresh wound on his shoulder. “And then what, pet? You will be the smoking puppet of the Seelie court? Don’t be so gullible,” he growled.
“Gullible! I am their family. They?—”
He stepped nearly flush against me, but I refused to move back. Focusing on his cold eyes was significantly harder when his midsternal line was staring me in the face. Tiny grooves of striations in between his pectoral muscles tormented me. Thedevil—Kaohs, whatever they called him here—knew exactly what he was doing when he made Mendax so alluring.
“They are using you,” he said with a twitch to his brow. He reached for my shoulder, but I shoved his hand away with my forearm.
Our tussle continued further into the throne room.
“Using me for what?” I asked. “I can’t do anything. I have been nothing but a burden to them. Queen Saracen looked out for me when my mother and sister died. What have you done for me? Manipulate me,” I said. “Try to kill me. Forced a bond that was unwanted. If it hadn’t been for Aurelius?—”
He fisted my hair, yanking my head back to press his face over mine. “Aurelius will be a pile of debris within the hour, you have my assurance of that.”
I struck Mendax in the face so hard, two of my knuckles split. The shot felt good—at least until I saw something wild crackle to life in his icy eyes.
His wings widened and grew with the same wavelike motion a snake would make if it coiled around your neck. With a violent yet graceful sweep of his leg, mine were knocked out from under me. The throne’s armrest was the only thing that stopped my fall. The dark prince shoved his fingers against my chest, and I fell back to sit on the queen’s extravagant throne.
