Death is immortality.
Death is your second chance.
Velian Terrashine belongs to a classless society of equality, art and democracy; a land full of creativity and mindfulness. It is in that perfect political system that one wrong movement, one carele...
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THE DWINDLING FLAME of the torch had quenched a long time ago and darkness had been devouring me ever since. The air was cold, excruciating and painful and my teeth chattered, breaking the everlasting silence like the flap of wings over a graveyard. Another sleepless night on the stone floor had my back aching and I closed my eyes in despair. Maybe I should have stayed in Lantra. Regrets were useless but tonight they were all I had.
If I got to choose now . . . I couldn't allow myself to think that way. Maybe pretending to be a young woman with blue eyes and no magic was better than that. Maybe not. I would never find out. Because now I was left alone and I couldn't allow myself to cry. If I did, the tears would never end and I'd wind up immersed into blackness forever.
That was why Denfer had objected when Amanda and everyone in the Gap World had wanted me to come here. He'd known the mayhem that place was. Even though that had been his plan in the beginning---to find me and send me here to create his new kingdom---after everything we'd been through together, he'd changed his mind. But now I was here. And he wasn't. I'd come here by my own will and I was so close to regretting it.
Why had I sacrificed myself for people who weren't even my people? I didn't have anyone. I'd never had. Only my parents, and I'd abandoned them without reluctance.
I knew that these thoughts were the product of countless sleepless nights, unending Red Days, poor eating habits and a handful of stress. I knew that I was better than that. I---
I heard a sound and instantly urged my mind to stop circling around that pattern of miserable and useless thoughts. Another sound echoed from the other side of the room, and I braced myself. In the darkness I couldn't see anything. In the darkness my mind screamed that something was wrong; really, really, wrong.
I didn't move as something cold and sharp touched my throat, threatening to slice it off and end me. I could hear someone's breath next to me, like the rustling of the leaves in a haunted forest, but I didn't dare roll my eyes in fear of having that blade penetrating my skin. Thankfully, it didn't come closer. It remained still. A sudden movement and I would be nothing but a fountain of glowing blood.
"Say nothing as you follow my orders or else I'll be more than glad to see you headless." The male voice was cold, empty, emotionless.
"Now, close your eyes," he commanded, the blade caressing my cheek. Unfaltering, lethal.
I obeyed.
🔱
I didn't know where he'd taken me, but it mustn't have been far from Denfer's room since it had only taken him a few minutes to order me to open my eyes again.
I did.
If my heart had lost a beat with that dagger threatening to cut my head off, by now it should have stopped pulsing. Because in that room that could only fit two people and smelled of moisture and death, there were only knives and swords. In every shape and side, placed on every inch of the walls with their edges pointed at us. That room could have been named the kingdom of assassins.
