A hand touched his shoulder, and he knew without looking back that it was Nyssa. She sank to her knees at his side and reached out for him.
“I told you not to follow me,” he managed.
She squeezed his hand, and Dorian swallowed. “You and me against the world, brother,” she whispered.
He almost choked on his breath as he squeezed her hand back. “From now until the end,” he promised.
She sank into his arms as his lips pressed hard to the top of her head. Together they stayed on that beach until the sunrise.
CHAPTER TWO
NYSSA HAD TO leave the Gallery quickly and run to her room after watching Aydra burn.
Every step was a chore down those halls. Belwarks tried to stop her. Dreamer servants whispered behind her back as she moved. But her ears rang, and her heart wouldn't stop throbbing.
She puked twice on the way there. Her eagle flew over her head the entire time. When she finally reached her room, she collapsed onto the cold floor, hearing the screams in her head but unsure if they were Aydra's or her own.
Until she thought her tears were nearly spent, and she glimpsed herself in the mirror.
Eyes swollen and bloodshot. Hair disheveled. Clinging onto the last bit of sanity she had left.
The broken Princess that had just watched her sister burn and had done nothing to stop it. The sister that had raised her and taught her to love herself no matter what their mother might call her. The sister that had been so proud of her.
And Nyssa had donenothing.
The failure.
You'll never be a queen.
You'll never live up to your sister.
You lack potential and a voice.
Weak and fat. You're just like Rhaifian.
Words from her mother as she walked around her on every dress fitting as a child. Sentences that had taken Nyssa a decade to move past with Aydra's help. She could still see Arbina standing behind her in the mirror. The white hair. The perfect face. Her chin always raised, and gaze casting down at Nyssa as though she were vermin for being a few pounds overweight even before she had turned eight years old.
Nyssa didn't realize she had the fire poker in her hands until the great three-way mirror came shattering down before her. Her scream came so violently from her throat that it burned.
Glass cut through her skin as she didn't bother guarding herself against it.
She kept swinging.
She broke that mirror.
She broke that image.
She broke thelies.
And when it was in pieces around her, she didn't bother stepping over the shards before she turned to the trinkets on her dresser. Trinkets Nadir had picked up and poked fun with her about, knowing they were nothing she ever wanted. Trinkets Dreamers had given her over the years trying to woo her.
Trinkets symbolizing the prison she was in.
Nyssa raged.
Breaking everything she could. Taking her knife to every dress she'd ever been given. Ripping the pillows. The mattress. The lounger. Picking up and breaking her favorite chair across the post of her bed. Smashing glasses against the walls.
It didn't matter.
