Dark Star [18+]

Chapter 9

Diana's POV

There's a downside to being loopy on Dark Star Power – I think it's tapping me into the Fey part of my DNA. I don't feel like me. I don't feel human anymore.

Not only do I have world-ending Elion ideas racing through my brain, I feel ice cold like a Galactic Queen who's lost her heart.

When I saw Mars clutching onto Orlai and drinking from her pretty little neck – I didn't just want her dead, I had been a breath away from ordering every Kor in my presence to tear her to pieces. The mere idea of such vengeance had made me feel giddy and all-powerful. My mind imagined the act. My Dark Nine heart didn't respond at all to the nightmarish cluster fuck of evil thoughts and feelings that flooded my head when Alpha Centauri woke me and dragged me to the scene.

Logic from the memory of who I truly am, stopped me acting on an evil instinct I had never had before in my life.

Then Jupiter took me close, Orlai was passed over to her mate – and my squad gathered around me, kissing, caressing and drinking from my neck in turns.

Ninth Squad attempted to seduce me, but their loving venom helped to block out the Enta's poison and my humanity came rushing back. With that came guilt, regret and shame for even imagining Orlai's demise. From being so close to commanding it. When I had been the one who begged her to come back. When she did nothing but do exactly as I ordered first – feed and please the Kors to help me.

I was officially scared of Kors in a brand-new way.

I had to get away from my Elion Kor lovers. I pushed out of their hands and I leaped from them all, crying on the run as I searched for space on Dark Ninth in their desolate Elion city.

Cinta's last words echo in my mind; Elions are not empathetic, they want to wipe us out, they just figured out they need to do it from the inside – they're learning how to fake loving you.

From the inside has a new meaning. They're also learning how to twist me up until I'm not even my core self anymore!

I remember how I sensed some empathy from Cinta when I spoke to her for that short while – I also saw the ice queen in her personality too. I had tried to understand why Cinta chained them up, enslaved them, tortured her mate, Venus... but now I understand she had experienced Enta Kor venom. So far, Enta venom giving me nightmares and then making me a 'Dark Estoria' a 'Dark Empress' was the closest thing that's pushed me to believing Kors in chains make sense. I certainly think the Enta need to be in chains. I also think my Kors lied to me because they never told me the power they harboured for me.

What other big secrets were there? Ten more? A thousand more? A billion more?

How dark did being an Empress get?

I had clearly been stuck in some honey-moon stage.

After attracting the Enta Kors, what other squads wanted to torment me with their brilliant powers through saturated Elion venom?

I owed them all my neck. All squads. All Kors. All of them.

For this power of having their affections, I didn't understand the responsibility nor weight of it.

The corrupting force behind them was too real now.

Cinta being the bitch Empress made sense. If she wasn't... I mean... she tried to save everyone in the universe from Kor demise. Elions might not have used her to go to war, but she lost her Fey species. Bitch or not – she was strong and she failed. What kind of chance did I have at being a successful Empress?