A blazing inferno torches a path through me, replacing all the ice. It consumes me. The brutal fuckingrageI’m feeling right now. My vision turns red and hazy, blood coating my fingers and the taste of it in my mouth, but it’s not my blood I’m tasting and feeling. It’s his.
“Find Bellamy now,” I bark.
Javier is already on it, able to hear Althea through the speaker of my phone. “Fuck. The cameras are out. There’s nothing on the second floor or by the ballroom.”
I start to go mad. “Check every fucking camera in the palace!”
“Nothing! There’s nothing on the second or third floor on the west side of the palace. Wait!” He clicks something. “There! This one is working.”
“What is that?”
“I had a new camera installed outside the third-floor library door last week when you told me Bellamy was fond of going up there to read. He must not have known about it when he tampered with the others. Look!” He rewinds the video, and there it is. “Samil has her.”
The words are barely out of his mouth when I take off at a blind sprint, not caring to wait for anyone though I know they’re behind me. I hear their footsteps, but I can’t focus on anything other than getting to her. Never in my life have I moved this fast.
He has her. My god, he has Bellamy. If he hurts one hair on her…
I take the stairs two at a time and then the door of the library is straight ahead. I speed up, plowing into the wood and splintering it off its hinges. It crashes with a bang like a gunshot, and I go tumbling into the room, only to catch myself before I fall and frantically search around.
“Sebastian, no!” Bellamy screams, and my eyes fling left. He’s on top of her, a knife at her chest, which is already stained with blood. Blood she’s covered in—her dress, her face, her neck.
I don’t think. I just react.
My body carries me across the room, and I launch myself at him just as he moves to plunge the knife into her. Another scream as the knife cuts her, and I plow into him, a bullet hitting him dead-on, the force of the impact knocking him off her.
The knife flies from his hand, and I scramble for it. My hand circles around the handle, and I clutch it in my fist, aiming it directly at Samil.
“Bellamy?!”
“She’s bleeding. A lot,” Rowan answers for her. “I can’t tell how deep the cut is. There’s more than one.”
Fuck. If she dies…
“Rowan get her out of here and get her help. Now. Keep everyone else away,” I yell. “Javier, I want you on my children. Make sure they’re safe on the opposite side of the palace and stay with them.” I stand, still holding the knife, my eyes dead on Samil’s.
“No, sir. I stay. You?—”
“No,” I bark, interrupting him. “Go and make sure my children are safe. That’s an order and I am not to be argued with. Samil is mine.”
Samil stands, too, spitting on the ground by my shoes and staring at me with murderous wrath.
There’s sound behind me, arguing—likely Bellamy refusing to go, if I know the stubborn woman—and then it’s silent. Just me and him. But the image of Bellamy on the floor beneath him. Her blood on my hand from the knife I’m gripping. Fever takes hold of me, a depraved, monstrous creature who will only be sated one way.
In a flash, I’m all over Samil, hitting him in the face with the butt of the butcher knife and instantly breaking his nose. He stumbles back, blood spurting from his nose like a broken faucet. He shrieks in pain but recovers quickly, and I go at him again, unable to stop. I throw the knife behind me into the library at least twenty feet from us.
I’m not going to stab him. That’s too easy.
I’m going to rip him apart piece by piece.
Running at him, I take both of us to the ground, rolling with him as I hit him and hit him and hit him, striking his face and chest with everything I have. Cracks and grunts and blood and sweat, but I need more, more, more.
“You killed her!” I bellow, clubbing my fist into his stomach. “Nora. You killed her. You tried to kill my children, you son of a bitch. My children!” I shout in a mindless rage. “Now Bellamy?! No. Never.”
“It should have been you instead of her!” Samil spits blood at me, shocking me long enough for him to thrash up, hitting me square in the eye with one hell of a shot that knocks me over. My vision swirls, but I clamber up to my hands and knees, then force myself upright, but it’s a second too slow and a second too late.
Samil slips out another knife, this one smaller, more ornate, and the bloody smile on his lips is nothing short of diabolical. “I grabbed the other knife when I crept back in. A crime of opportunity. It was bigger. Able to do more damage. But this one is mine, and I think I’ll enjoy killing you with it even more than I would have the other one.”
He strikes before I have a chance to move or protect myself, landing the blade directly in my upper left chest, right above my heart. A piercing howl tears from my throat as pain like the fires of hell chases through me. I fall to the side, winded. Blood pours from my chest, and my hand attempts to staunch it, but it’s no use. It’s a river of red as it soaks my white shirt.
