❛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...
"This," I whispered, slowly slicing through his neck with his own weapon, "this is for me."
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[ONE THOUSAND YEARS LATER.]
HARTINGTON CASTLE, ALNWICK, STORMHOLT.
EDWINA
SOME PEOPLE WERE JUST BORN to fight.
Just born to be a living, breathing weapon made of bone and flesh instead of flame and steel. Just born to be tested, over and over, again and again, to be broken and splintered and crushed until there was nothing left.
Because this was what the universe did. This was how it made survivors.
The blood was everywhere.
On my crooked fingers, on the stained knives, on the marble floors.
"Do it," she crooned. "Kill him. End this."
If I had even a shred - a shred - of decency left in me, I would have put down that dagger and let her destroy me before I touched him. Something in me fractured as my trembling hands picked up the blade, a prayer whispering on my tongue.
She nudged me with her foot to move closer to him, to him awaiting his death.
"Go on," she purred.
I turned the figure around, and whatever remained of my heart charred away to ashes.
I knew that face.
I knew the despair and misery that thrived in those blue green eyes.
I knew the way that red hair curled in the damp, the way those full lips curled with a twitch.
My hands finally stopped shaking as I studied that hated, hated face.
My face.
Then I gripped the knife and plunged it right into my wicked heart.
The face began to bleed and melt into flesh as white hot agony struck me in the lungs. The face changed, and it was Pandora leering again at me, eyes shining as the string of cold gemstones around her throat strangled her. She turned to Drusilla, furious and frigid as the frozen crown atop her head. Tears of crimson rolled down her cheeks into a sea of red, vultures circling her head as her bloodshot, rotting eyes twisted in anger. The face changed to Alaric, wickedly smiling as he jabbed knife after knife into my heart. Then he turned to Celestina, then Deimos, then Aidon, to Emerick, to all their cold faces laughing at me, mocking me, taunting me as I screamed and screamed and screamed.
