Flashes of my sister flicker behind my eyelids. Us chasing each other barefoot through the garden. Our mother calling us in for dinner. Our father lifting us high into the sky. Back when we were whole. Back when we were safe.
A vicious, piercing pain rips into my neck. The white-hot shock of it shoves the memories out of my head. A second stab of agony makes me scream. A raw animal sound I didn’t think I had in me.
The room echoes, as my body convulses, the weight pinning me down vanishes in an instant. I hit the floor as if I’m a dead thing, gasping. I’m not dead yet. I can still taste my own blood and feelmy heart pounding as though it’s trying to break free from my chest. Maybe I still have one more fight in me.
Confused, my body trembles from the inside out, each breath rattling in my chest. I can’t see anything, just a thick rolling fog of black behind my eyelids. But, I can hear the chaos spilling out around me. Voices blur and clash until one-line cuts clear through the haze.
“You made her your fucking banshee?”
A chill rips down my spine at the venom in that voice. I dig my nails into my palms and drag in a ragged breath, forcing my limbs to listen. My knees buckle as I push up off the floor, the dull throb in my head beats in time with my pulse.
Another breath. Then another. Slowly, the darkness starts to crack at the edges. I blink, once, twice, and the world shifts.
Gone is the cold room, the walls that reeked of iron and power. Gone is Thorne and Saoirse. Instead, I’m standing barefoot in a wide-open field that glows with an impossible colour. Yellow daffodils stretch out in every direction, a sunlit ocean rippling under the bite of the wind. My arms brush against the soft heads of the flowers as I spin in place. Their stems bend and sway in a silent rhythm, except it isn’t silent. The breeze carries a voice, dozens of them all whispering in unison.
Stay away from that human male.
Their papery petals tremble against my ankles as the chant rolls on.Stay away. Stay away.
Pressing my shaking hands to my sides, I wrap my arms around myself. The daffodils blur as tears stings my eyes but I can’t look away. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
The breeze sharpens into a hiss that curls around my ears, cutting deeper.Stay away from that human male.The wind dies all at once. The field stills and the flowers stop swaying, every bright yellow head tilt toward me in eerie unison, watching.
Oh, brilliant. A human for his banshee.Of course.Not in seven hells am I letting this pitiful farce crawl another inch forward. What the fuck was he thinking? She’s not even immortal, she’s not even interesting. A brittle little thing wrapped in mortal skin and that’s who he hands the most dangerous power in existence to.
Look at her, she can barely stand without quivering like a leaf. She’d probably end up slitting her own throat before she ever learned how to wield that amount of power properly. The universe spits out monsters, queens and horrors sculpted from shadow, and he picks that? That soft, breakable mess?
A stiff wind would send her sprawling in the dirt just like the worthless weed she is. This is his grand legacy. His unstoppable weapon? Pathetic.
My heels clack, the sound like gunshots on the cold stone flooras I march down the hall. The guards flinch as they step aside, they're smart enough not to meet my eyes. Thorne thinks he’s won. Thinks he can toss me aside as if I’m one of the palace whores he sneaks into his chambers at night. I’m not some wilted petal he can press between pages and forget.
With anger boiling in my veins, I tear the silver necklace from my neck and fling it into the shadows. The mark of a favoured consort, but never a chosen one. Never a banshee. I should have set it aflame the day his father died.
Forty-Four years of pretending to love his touch, of whispering sweet poison in his ear, of building his empire for him. Well, no more. They always underestimate the ones they use.
My mind crawls with all the delicious ways I’ll tear the power from that fragile little human as I stalk back to my wing of this crumbling excuse for a castle. Nobody steals what’s mine and lives to breathe a word of it. It was always meant to be me. I was supposed to be his banshee, his perfect weapon.
Now, finally it makes sense. All his squirming and hesitating whenever I dared bring it up. Foolish, gullible me, thinking he needed a few more decades to get over the fact that I used to be his stepmother. Pathetic. I should have ripped that sentimentality out of him.
Rage crawls under my skin as I slam my room door so hard the stone walls quiver. The sound ricochets through the blood-red space, rattling the iron sconces and stirring the shadows that cling to the corners. Candlelight flickers against the walls, making the crimson paint look darker, wetter, like it’s stillbleeding. Heavy drapes hang over a single narrow window, shutting out the world and trapping the heat of my fury inside.
How many times will I let a male make a fool of me? Never again.
Fuck Thorne. He had his chance. Now I’ll take what’s owed to me, piece by trembling piece.
More than anything I would love to kill that trembling mess of a human. Unfortunately, I can’t kill her outright. Not yet. If I slit her throat, that power will scuttle right back to Thorne. I’ll be no better off. No, I need it unbound, and I’ll find a way to make it mine without that clueless bastard Thorne ever suspecting.
There’s always a way. There must be, and when I find it, I’ll peel every shred of that banshee’s power from her squealing little mortal frame. I’ll stand over her limp, empty husk, and savour every drop of it as it settles into me. Nobody will ever have the teeth to take it back.
A bitter smile twists across my lips as I catch my reflection in the dark glass of the window. I look every bit the monster they whisper about in the corridors. Good. Let them cower. Let them pray I never look their way. All my focus is on her now, that breakable little thing clinging to a crown she was never meant to wear.
She doesn’t know it, but every step she takes and every breath she steals, pulls her closer to me. When the time is right, I’ll tear that banshee’s scream from her lungs with my own claws. I’ll wear it like a shroud, and this whole rotten realm will bow. Not to Thorne, not to a mortal girl… but to me.
Let him come for me when he realises. Let him rage and roar. He made his choice when he handed my birthright to a human. When I’m done, there’ll be nothing left of her, but a cautionary tale whispered in the dark. Proof that nobody,nobody, steals from Saoirse and lives.
With that thought, I settle into the shadows, already spinning the first thread of the trap.Lig don fhiach tosú.(Let the hunt begin.)
This is the last thing I fucking need. Saoirse unhinged and on the hunt. She’s been clawing for the banshee crown for years, the same way she did with my father. He warned me with blood in his throat that she’s poison dressed in silk. I’ve let her slip between my sheets, but that’s where her power ends. I’d rather set the world on fire than let her wear the mantle meant for death itself.
