Samil edges back toward the bookshelves and windows, watching me, thinking I’m done and that he got the final word. Not going to happen.
I peer up at him, rising to my feet, fighting off the pain and lightheadedness. I stalk in his direction, and his dark eyes widen as he slowly backs up, a cornered animal.
“Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? You’re not walking out of here tonight. You’re over,” I tell him, pressing my hand deeper against my wound, trying to catch my breath. “I have the video of you with Nora the morning she died. I know it was you. I know you tampered with the video of the helicopter. Why Samil?”
He shifts the knife in his hand, holding it up and out in front of him, but his hand is trembling now. He didn’t intend for this. He thought he could kill Bellamy and, with shorting out all the cameras, get away with it the way he did last time. Presumptuous fucking fool, his arrogance was always his worst enemy.
“I hate you,” he seethes. “I wanted you dead. I wanted your children dead. Then nothing would have stood in her way. I would have given her as many children as she wanted. She never wanted you. How could she when she had me?”
I shake my head. The man is so delusional. “You never understood her. She would have died along with us if you had killed her children. They’re what she loved. Being queen is what she loved. Not you.”
He growls, twisting the knife in his hand.
I stagger a step, the pain in my chest excruciating, my vision swaying. “All this time I believed it to be the curse when it was you. I ruined three years of my children’s lives over you.”
He smiles, his teeth bloody, his face bruised, his expression telling me he’s nowhere near done. “Good. You all should have died that morning on the helicopter, and if I’d had the chance these three years, I would have killed them for sure a secondtime. The way I planned to kill Bellamy. Too bad you got here when you did. She would have looked beautiful broken on the rocks. I couldn’t wait for you to see it.”
A red haze coats my vision, removing all logic from my mind. My children and Bellamy are all I see as I throw myself at him. For a second, I catch him off guard. I’m injured and bleeding heavily and he has the knife, which is how I’m able to get the momentary upper hand, and we collide into the bookcase, the sound like thunder as the room shakes.
“You’ll never get near them again,” I roar, attacking him with everything I have. He swings the knife wildly, stabbing my back in the process. More pain, but this time, it hardly registers as I roll us until we crash into the window, grappling for the weapon. Glass cracks and breaks. Icy wind slaps me in the face, bringing with it some clarity, and I grip his hand holding the knife and wrench two fingers away from the handle while compelling the tip of the blade away from me. With the remains of my strength, I twist his fingers and wrist until they’re bent at an awkward, painful angle, and finally, with a bellow of agony and frustration, he drops the knife.
I kick it away, shooting it across the room as I did the other one.
Then it’s just him and it’s just me.
With my strength dwindling—I know I’ve lost too much blood—I push on, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and getting right up in his face. “You’re done, Samil. Your name ruined. Your legacy bullshit. Maybe that’s the worst punishment for you. I’ll go on. I’ll still be king. I’ll marry Bellamy. My children will grow and continue to rule this land. But you’ll be forgotten. You have no more power here. I won’t let you curse us anymore.”
I shove him into the partially broken window to create some space. I suck in a breath, forcing myself to think rationally. As much as I’d love to kill Samil for all he’s done, I am nothim. I’ll never be him. Killing him makes me no better than he is, and I won’t suffer that fate.
I take a step back, and then another, and his eyes widen in shock. “Giving up?” he taunts, but it’s weak and fractured like he is.
“Your blood is not worth my conscience. I’d rather watch you suffer in prison for the rest of your miserable, pathetic life.”
Another step, and something on the floor catches my eye. I bend to pick it up. Bellamy’s diamond heart, the chain severed. I clasp it in my fist just as Samil snarls from behind me.
“If this is where I end, it’s where we both end.” He jumps on my back, his forearm wrapping around my throat, strangling me. His other hand comes around me, pushing in on my stab wound, and I thrash from side to side, desperate to dislodge him from me, struggling from lack of oxygen and overwhelming pain.
His grip on me is true, my air all but cut off, and I slam back, nailing him into the wall to try to get his chokehold to slacken. I do this again and again, losing power and momentum with each thrust. Spots dance behind my eyes, breathless gasps die on my lips. My fingernails scratch at his wrists and forearm, my vision too far gone to know what I’m doing.
It’s close. My end is close. So close I can feel it.
And Samil isn’t letting go. He’s attacking me with everything he has, and I’m swinging wildly, blindly, and then I hear it.
Glass breaking. A cry of pain. And then…
A rush of air shoots into my lungs, my body coughing and sputtering uncontrollably as the chokehold around my neck slackens. Slackens and shifts. Hands fumble on me, gripping at my shoulders, jerking me back. Instinctively, I press my weight forward to fight it, twisting my body, and he slips lower to thefabric of my shirt. Then even lower to the waist of my pants. Then gone.
I can’t make sense of it. His cries and shouts and words. They’re garbled in my fuzzy mind. Until I feel it. The cold air on my back. The urgency in his words.
I whip around and instantly lock on Samil’s terrified gaze as it helplessly clings to mine, a large piece of windowpane sticking out of his upper back, but that’s not what has him so panicked.
He’s about to fall. Straight to his death, onto the very rocks he planned to kill Bellamy on.
A shudder ravages my body as I drop to my knees, my hands digging through the shards of glass to find his. He’s barely hanging onto the window, his body dangling.
“Sebastian!”
I have no strength, but I try. “Grab onto me! I can’t hold you like this.” I grip his hand and his forearm, pulling, but…
