He spits a wad of blood on the floor at my feet. “Leave it to you to whore your way back,” he snarls. His voice is pained, but the words still come out with that same venom as always. “How long did it take you to open your legs for these beasts?”
My monsters shift with fury, but as I stare at the man I once feared more than anything, all I feel is…pity. He’s weak, so weak, and rotting from the inside. The fear dissipates as soon as I realize the only hold he had over me was terror.
I stroll forward, looking into his eyes, and though the child in me is afraid, the woman I’ve become doesn’t back down. “Seven days,” I tell him, my eyes hard. “I fucked them the first chance I got. Does that make you feel superior?” I lift up my hand, and a single spark appears on the tip of my finger. His eyes widen in fear. “Would you like to know how I screamed in pleasure?” The spark dances around. “Would you like me to tell you how I moaned their names?”
“Whore,” he spits. “You belong over there with them.”
“You’re right,” I agree. “I do.”
The single spark travels from my finger and into his eye, burning. Grim clamps a hand over his mouth before the scream comes out, keeping it muffled. Only then do I realize no one else has come out to check on the sounds.
Furrowing my brow, I recall my magic as panic winds through me.
“Where’s Kai?” I ask, looking toward the door where we slept. The door is open, and I can see the empty room beyond. When I lean over to the other small room, I see my mother staring up at the ceiling with glazed eyes, as if she doesn’t realize there are monsters in her house. I doubt she even knows she’s alive. She’s an empty vessel, nothing more.
My father spits blood and starts to laugh, despite the fact he’ll be blind in one eye now.
“The king took her.” He laughs, and there’s pure glee on his face, despite his pain. “You didn’t save her after all.”
Fury floods through me until I feel my magic glowing under my skin. I snarl and grab his face in my fingers, forcing him to look at me. “Where did he take her?”
His laughter twists my soul, but I’ve long since accepted that this man is no father of mine, despite his sperm donation. “She’s his now,” he rasps out, and it’s like a nail in the coffin. “Your sacrifice meant nothing.”
I bare my teeth at him, and sparks fly from my fingers, giving him burn after burn after burn.
His muffled screams only make it worse…
Where the fuck is my sister?
ChapterForty-One
Ican’t contain my magic. It explodes out of me with a ragged, agonized scream.
Falling to my knees, I watch my men fling through the walls of the shack I used to live in, the walls splintering as they disappear into the shadows beyond. My father writhes and then stills, and yet I can’t stop.
My heart breaks and cracks.
Everything I did was to protect her, to give her a better life, and she’s gone.
She’s with him, the king, the man who descends from a long line of men willing to kill their daughters for power.
There’s a grunt, and then a hand wraps around my neck from behind. When I glance down, I see my magic burning Grim’s skin, but he still holds on. “Cora, calm down,” he orders, “or you’ll kill us all.”
That makes me gasp and pull my magic back. I slump into him with a cry, turning and burying my face into his expansive chest.
“Shh, I have you, little one,” he promises, his big hand stroking up and down my back as sobs rack my body.
Fear, something I never wanted to feel again, roars through me.
“He has my sister, Grim,” I whisper as I lift my head. My tear-stained face makes him growl, and his mesmerizing eyes flash with anger and understanding.
“I know.” He wipes under my eyes, his lips ghosting over the same path. “Tell us what you want to do.”
I search his eyes, and I see the truth there—he will follow me anywhere, no matter what I decide to do.
That has me sitting up straighter, feeling determined.
After all, I’m not Cora the weak human anymore.
