“Koen… please let me take care of this.” I go to reach for his shoulder, but pause, my heart seizing as it falls back to my side. “I am the one that got me in this mess, I can finish it. You don’t have to protect me.”
“Yeah.” Klayra’s plush lips curl upward. “Listen to yourlittle killer. She can protect herself.”
“She is no killer,” he growls, the sound mixing with a sudden deranged voice. “She is nothing like you.”
Klayra rubs her hand across her nose after picking the dagger up, his blood still stained against the silver blade. “Ah, are you still butt hurt about losing Roiyland?” she teases, her lips tugging into a vile grin. “She was never going to survive that year.She was weak.I smelt it on her.”
Who the hell is Roiyland?
My body begins to heat, feeling fire tickle against my fingertips as they continue to scream at each other here at the Pyre.
I heave, my throat constricting as a fear I have felt this whole time might be true.
I don’t know Koen. I don’t know the darkness that he holds.
I will never know the women he holds at night, or kisses under the stars.
And one thing is for certain, now that will never be me.
And that breaks me.
That fumes the rage inside me.
“You had no right deciding her fate!” Koen bellows, veins swelling against his neck and temples. “The Gods determine when it is our time to face them, not yours!”
“And you believe…” She points the sharp blade towards me, her eyes gleaming into a wicked narrow slit. “She has the right to decide?”
“It was an accident!” Florian interjects. “We…shehad no idea her abilities would be more powerful than anything that we have seen in the written ways of Azure.”
“Oh, we are bringing up the written way of our Gods now, are we? How cute,” she scuffs, rolling her eyes as the chosen begin to walk our way. I hesitantly stumble backwards, my chest rising and falling, trying to control all of the thoughts that are running wild inside me. Octavian warned me not to create a scene, to stay hidden, but it's the same as the dormitory.I can never hide from who I am.
“Is it true?” The man from the sea nods his head, crossing his arms.“She can burn those who touch her to ash?”
Koen glances over his shoulder towards me, his curls hiding my favorite feature of him…his eyes. “It is, Zake.”
He utters the words, voice almost dropping to a whisper, and as he brushes the curls away from his face, I melt as I catch sight of the emerald hues dancing in his eyes. But they are soft. They aren’t sparked with life as I used to see, but now are shadowedwithregret. They almost seem to plead for a different world, one where the truth of what he had just spoken does not exist.
Yet, it does.
This is now, this is real, and it’s breaking me.
Zake’s brows pull upward. “We have been warned not to trust the woman who bears that curse.”
“It isn’t a curse!” Florian hisses, moving his body in front of me as we both catch sight of Zake ripping his blades out. “What you have been told is wrong!”
Ivker’s mechanical arm holds a sword from their training, tossing his auburn hair behind his shoulder in preparation to attack…me.
Truthfully, Ivker scares the shit out of me.
“Get behind me.” Florian’s eyes darken. “If anything goes wrong, you run.”
I nod, almost tripping on the log behind us.
A deep, guttural roar erupts from the Klayra’s throat, cutting through the air as I catch sight of her attempting to jab Koen in the side, but he blocks it with his dagger just as fast. Their eyes lock as Koen’s lips pull into a smirk.
“Are you sure about this?” he teases.
She grunts, yanking the dagger away. “I’ve waited a century for this moment,dark one. You will regret what you have done.”
