“I should have slit your throat the moment you left Argellion’s ruined cunt,” he choked into her ear. “ThesecondI laid eyes on you and heard the sound of your pathetic cries,mewling for her leaking tit. If I’d known what a fucking nuisance you would be, I’d have saved us all the trouble.”
“You’re… just… jealous.”
There was no point in finishing until he let go. It wouldn’t be long anyway.
Nearly…
Now.
She sucked in air with gasping relief, spitting blood onto the floor.
Only, she finally recalled there was no floor anymore. Just miles and miles of her starlight hair.
Curse it and damn it. Now there was blood in her hair. Or was there already blood in her hair? It was so hard to remember…
“What could a meddling whore like you possibly have for me to be jealous of?”
Oh. Right. She’d nearly forgottenwhenshe was.
Mustering every immortal ounce of her defiance, she forced her eyes open. The swelling made it difficult, but it was worth it.
Worth it, as always, to see his perfect lips peeled back in a sneer far too hideous for the beauty he boasted. To see his eyes flash with fury against his mottled, alabaster skin. To see that long lock of platinum hair—the one that never stayed tucked behind his pointed ear—tremble with coiled violence.
She was the only one capable of riling him and it always brought her a twisted sense of satisfaction to do it.
So, yes. It wasworththe encumbered breath when yet another split vision presented itself and she chose her path, saying, “My lustrous, feathered wings. Obviously.”
They hadn’t been lustrous in hundreds of years, but her seeming delusion would diffuse him for a moment.
“You’re completely mad.” One corner of his mouth twitched upwards as he considered her, his mood as changeable as the wind. “Believe me, I couldn’t possibly care less about yourfucking deformity.” Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair and paced away, as if to leave.
“But they’re such a stunning representation of the greater issue!”
He stopped dead at the far end of the cavern, his head tilting back. “Which is?”
Finally here, living it, she knew there was just enough time to deliver words all the more devastating for their truth. Words she hated, but they would need him off guard.
The two visions became one and her fate was sealed. Nothing for it. No matter how much it was going to hurt.
“That here, on my back, is everything you’ve ever wanted and will never possess. I was loved, while you’ve wasted your days wondering whether the same was true for yourself, instead ofseeingwhat was right in front of you.”
He went so, so still.
“That I am of the stars and Iknow it,but you will never have a sure moment in your life. Traitors rarely do. After all, you’re the coward who was weak enough to believe the lies of Night.”
He disappeared, traveling through the unseen channels of this world in the blink of an eye. When he reappeared before her, she delivered the final blows.
“Argellion should have slityourthroat, just to save us all the trouble of having to put up with your incessant insecurities. Instead, you look at my wings and all you can think is that she loved me more than she ever could have loved you, like the utter fool you are.”
A single tear escaped the confines of his long lashes and slid down his cheek, his eyes burning with so much hatred that it sucked the air from her lungs—right before a scream rose up from the depths of him.
He threw himself at her captive body, spittle flying as he slammed, and slammed his fists against her.
Just like she knew he would.
Heart in his throat,Brand stepped out into the chasm and put his lips to Luna’s ear, his voice hardly a whisper. “Spread the shield, as far as you can.”
Fumbling through the teeming murk, deluded into thinking it was hiding them, would be foolish in the extreme. Whatever had made that hideous sound, he wanted to see it for himself and face it head-on.
