"Usually when I watch someone die, they stay dead," he says, his tone frigid and callous.
My skin crawls, but I don't speak, nor do I budge.
"Yet, here you are," he continues, his voice sharpened with an ominous implication.
"I-I beg your pardon?"
"Who are you?" His question hangs in the air like a blade, poised to kill me.
"I am Lyra, your son’s wife," I say, my words weak, breakable.
“Are you?” He smirks. “You may wear his ring, but that does not mean you are his wife in truth.”
My heart pounds in my chest as I try to figure out where this conversation is going. What does he want from me?
"What are you saying?" The question escapes my numb lips.
"You are not what you seem. You are not a mere noblewoman from some insignificant family that Jasce happened to marry. You have secrets."
He knows?
I swallow hard. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Jerrod leans forward, his eyes pinning me to the chair. "Don't play coy with me. I know things about you. Things that would make your husband question why he ever married you."
Heat rises in my cheeks. What could Jerrod possibly know?
My voice trembles again, betraying my fear. "What kind of things?"
Jerrod slouches back in his chair, a cruel smile playing at his lips. "I know you're not innocent. Someone fucked you before your wedding, and it wasn't your husband."
"Who?" I ask, wondering what he will say.
"Do you not rememberourtryst on your wedding day?"
My mind reels as Lyra’s truth burns my ears, as if she whispers them to me. Maybe she does because of our soul linking. Surely that is what it means. We are linked.
Jerrod took from her, forced her, then broke her.
“There was no tryst.” Anger forms deep within me—anger that has boiled just below the surface. Always there. Always dormant. Always forced to submit. “You’re a monster who takes what you want by force.”
Jerrod lunges out of his chair and wraps his fingers around my throat, his grip like iron. “Watch your tongue, or I will cut it out.”
I gasp for breath, but he only squeezes harder, stifling my ability to breathe, to think, to fight him off me.
He will kill you.
Desperation fuels me as I struggle against his grip. I claw at him, hoping that if I can cause him enough pain, he will let go of me, but it only makes him squeeze harder.
I slip into darkness as he cuts the air off from my lungs. This is how I die—strangled by a monster.
No.
Fight!
Images of myself as a young girl flood my thoughts—the ones where Grandfather locked me away and told me how hideous I was. I channel that pain, that sadness, that grief, that horror. It erupts from deep within me, burning a molten core in my chest.
I scream the ancient Hematite words as power surges from my veins, inexplicable power that spews from me like a volcano. Jerrod’s grip loosens as flames burst from my fingertips, sending him sprawling across the room. As he crashes into the wall, the flames dissipate, and I lurch to my feet, the anger still churning inside me.
