My jaw snaps shut, anger pulsing through me.
Her family has killed thousands. They're responsible for the entire fall of our once great nation. And she has the audacity to cry for the death of one demented noctis male?
A decade of running. A decade of forcing myself to be alone so that I wouldn’t ever have to feel the pain of losing a loved one again. All of it has culminated today. A day when the humans fight back and the noctis get what they’re owed.
I am fortified and I am bold.
And I just fucking survived and healed a noctis bite.
Fuck this bitch and her grief.
I lunge, claws outstretched, and teeth bared like I'm the fucking teeth of the realm sent to claim its justice.
She staggers back, the crossbow becoming limp in her grasp. As it clatters to the dusty floor, I realize there’s no bolt nocked, and I remember she wasted her final two shots while I was running here.
She was bluffing.
That still doesn’t mean she’s defenseless.
Before my eyes, the vile beast inside her—inside them all—awakens. A monster trapped in human skin. Her eyes glow red with the blood she’s thrived on. Her fangs seem to glint with anticipation of more.
We collide in the middle of the room, fists to bones, vengeance for justice.
Neither of us are fighters. Being a royal Devonshire, I doubt she's had to spend any of her time learning to fend for herself, trying to overpower her prey. They're probably bled for her into crystal decanters, and then poured into wine glasses that probably cost more than this entire village did. She’s lived a life of luxury and doesn't even know how little she means in the grand scheme of things.
I’m no fighter either, but the two of us are well-matched. We trade blows and blocks. We trade blood for blood.
One of her fists slams into my gut. I counter with a crack to her back.
Before she loses balance, she uses the momentum to roll, nearly sweeping me off my feet, but giving us both time to recover.
But we’re never apart for long. This fight has been brewing for decades. She represents everything I’ve ever hated, everything I’ve ever wanted to fix.
When my right jab misses and she snatches my arm out of thin air, I let her. I let her latch onto me and drink. I let her think that she’s bested me.
The same look of confusion that crossed Harland after he drank from me crosses her now.
Her face sours and she releases my arm. "You don't taste right—"
Before she has time to recover, I bury the shard of glass I still have tucked away in my non-dominant hand into her belly, all the way up to my fist. She splutters, my blood and hers spraying from her lips. The sight of it reminds me of my mother, and the way the noctis killed her slowly, making each pull of blood agonizing.
I bringthe Devonshire bitchclose and look dead into her eyes. "It was me." My voice is husky, steady in a way I didn’t think possible. "I killed him. I took your Rhain away from you."
I prepare for her to unleash her fury upon me.
I brace myself for her fist or her fangs.
But I did nothing to brace myself for her tears. They pool in the depths of her grieving eyes like my mother's blood had pooled on the floor.
She looks at me the same way I looked at the noctis that day. Like I am a monster. And like she just lost her entire world. “Blighted we suffered,” she splutters. “Bloodied you’ll fall.”
Unprepared to deal with the assault of guilt and remorse and disturbed by the way her words sound like a vow of vengeance, I jerk the shard of glass out of her stomach and give her a swift death with another slash across her throat.
26
CHASING URSULETTE
Tracking has never been my forte. I'm more adept at reading for endless hours and retaining almost all of the words that my eyes have skimmed, so much so that when we were boys, Caz would quiz me by flipping to a random page in a book I'd just put down, read half a sentence, and ask me to finish it from memory alone. I was almost always correct.
