Her eyelids grew heavy.
“Please, don’t kill him. Take me—” Her tongue was heavy.
Her heart cracked in half.
No.
No.
She tried to stay awake, but she had used up too much magic too fast. Blood dripped from her nose. Something wet trailed down her cheeks and she wasn’t sure if it was blood, tears, or both.
She couldn’t lose like this. She couldn’t.
Nikator would die for her treason.
She had to do something, but what could she do in this situation? She tried to grip onto a plan—something,anything—that could work, but the more she tried to think, the more she was grasping at nothing.
The last thing she saw was Muyang’s sword arc through the air. Before it could meet Nikator’s neck, darkness enveloped her.
43
Emptiness.That was all Biyu felt.
Even in a dreamlike realm, she realized she had lost everything; the freedom she had gained had come at a cost she wasn’t willing to pay, and now she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
Nikator wasgone.
She had gambled, and she had lost. Horribly.
It was another mistake to add to her long list. She didn’t know how to she was going to live with herself now that he was dead. What was the point in life if her lover was violently taken away from her? Could she ever move on from this? The pain in her chest told her no. She would never be able to get over it. She would never fall in love again—loving him was enough for a lifetime.
The emptiness in her chest grew wider and wider, until it engulfed her completely in darkness. The kind of bleak nothingness that brought no relief in being lost and forgetting everything; it was the kind of void that shredded her heart open and made her feel every drop of pain, every ounce of loss.
When her eyes fluttered open and she found herself in a cramped, unfamiliar room with a single bed, her memoriescrashed back to her in sickening detail. The promise Muyang had given her, the freedom she had achieved, the final fight against Nikator, their kiss, his eventual demise at the hands of the man who had raised him.
Tears flooded her eyes and she curled up around herself. Sobs wracked over her body and she continued to cry until she had nothing left to give.
Nikator was dead and she was free.
He had given himself up for her.
For her freedom. For her life.For her.
She wanted to scream, to cry—anything that would lessen the feeling of her heart being cleaved in half. She had never felt such a pain before. It was like she had lost something more important than air itself. It was strange how she was still able to breathe, to move, to feel, when everything was so heavy, so excruciating.
She spiraled down a hole of self-doubt, allowing it to consume her with pitying thoughts and rage—why hadn’t she accepted his offer to go to Sanguis? She would have been miserable, but at least he would have beenalive. She should have realized there were worse fates than death, and this was one of them. She shouldn’t have tried to outwit a devilish man like Drakkon Muyang—he was cruel and he would never allow a slight to go unpaid. No stupid promise from years ago could have changed that.
Another sound tore from her throat—half animalistic, half pathetic, and mostly desperate. She buried her face in the pillows and screamed into it.
She would never see those sapphire eyes light with mischief, soften with kindness, sharpen with fury, or dance with joy. She would never hear his rare laughter. Never listen to his dry remarks, his snappish words, his sarcasm. She would never feel safe with another person like she had with Nikator.
Her gaze skated around the room and a pure, burning hatred coursed through her violently. She wanted to scorch this place to ashes. She wanted the world—this wretched palace—to feel every iota of pain she felt. She wanted everyone to feel the warmth of this place burning, because that was all she could do. She wanted to light it all in a blaze. Watch it burn to nothing, so that she might feel something other than this aching in her chest.
But when she tried pulling on the threads of her magic, she came up empty. She tried again, and again, but nothing happened. Muyang must have redone the wards after her fight with Nikator so that she couldn’t use her magic anymore. The realization made her shoulders slump and she chucked the pillow across the room with another scream.
Burying her face in the covers, her screams turned to sobs again.
What was the point in anything? She knew that Nikator wouldn’t like her thinking like that. He would have wanted her to move on from him, to find happiness with other people, to create a life for herself, to find purpose. He would have wanted her to make friends. To marry. To have children. Everything that she was supposed to do with him.
