❛WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE THE TEN MOST POWERFUL GODS ALIVE PLAY A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS WITH ONE SEAT?❜
They fight - to the death.
They fight over three crowns and a throne with steel spiked maces. They despair a little more everyday keeping thei...
"You were supposed to put me down for a nap, woman. Not a fucking coma," Tristan Valmont softly murmured through the haze.
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HARTINGTON CASTLE, ALNWICK, STORMHOLT.
TRISTAN
I WANTED TO CRACK MY head open with my bare hands.
It throbbed so badly.
And there was a white figure in the darkness, a figure that my throbbing eyeballs barely made out. The person was gently stroking my hair, their touch as gentle as a dove's wing - such carefulness that it filled my yearning heart with tender warmth.
Her. It was her.
I had to be dreaming.
I must be dreaming. I must still be asleep. She would have gone back to Dracnesse. She would not have set foot inside Stormholt, no. She wouldn't have taken two steps near me.
"You were supposed to put me down for a nap, woman. Not a fucking coma."
I hardly recognized my voice. It felt so hoarse. So raw and scalded, as if I'd been screaming at the top of my lungs.
Her head snapped up at once.
Relief flooded into Edwina's eyes.
Her eyes.
They were glassier than I'd ever seen, bearing such a strange sheen around the edges. As if frosted over with moisture which was forbidden from leaking out of the eyes and down her tired face. Her gaze held such ancient tiredness, as if she hadn't slept since years.
"Oh, fuck," she breathed softly to herself, keeping her face set.
In a moment, she was out of the chair she'd been slumped on, dragging her weary feet across the floor to pick up something sharp. The heat behind my eyeballs nearly blinded me just like the searing pain in my shoulder. I tried to shift but her expert hands swiftly held my head down as Edwina plopped down to the bed beside me. She was holding a knife in her hand.
Memories flashed across my vision. Another time. Another knife. The same victim - me - screaming. A body. Chains. That knife... gripped so tightly in a white fist that the veins popped through the sheer skin. That knife.
"No. No."
"I need to open the bandages," Edwina deftly held my flitting hands in place as the knife got closer to me.
