My wrist is in his fist within the blink of an eye, and he holds me back with a smile cutting across his features.
“My sweet, sexy bride.You’re weak,” he whispers like a sentiment.
Weak. Weak. Weak.
The single word from his lips is enough for the beast inside me to roar awake. Its hostility growls through my entire body, and even the Prince himself seems impressed by the waves of power radiating off of the hidden creature within me.
Until my elbow flings forward and slams over the bridge of his nose so hard he doesn’t immediately react. Blood spews from his face, and his hand lifts slowly to find that it’s his own blood.
Real surprise darkens his face.
“You’re a weak bitch,” he repeats more violently.
Power shakes through me as vicious teeth extend in my mouth. It’s something I’ve felt a time or two in teens, but I’ve never welcomed it so much in my entire life as I do right now. My knees bend, and I’m leaping at him in seconds.
He’s just faster.
Strong arms wrap around me. It’s a vise of a grip as he twists me until my back is to his front and he’s hauling me with him as he drags me to my sister.
Her tears are loud and shaking now. Her pretty face is stained with wet, blotchy sadness. My beast shrinks back at the mere idea of harming her if it gets too close.
“Carve your fucking moon.” He twists my arm until the blade in my hand is so near her soft cheek.
“Fuck you,” I grind out, my head flinging back to slam into what I hope is his bloody, broken nose.
A roar of anger pulses through his body as he grips my hand so hard the metal of the weapon cuts into my palm.
“It’s her face or your fucking life, Cersia!” He brings the curved edge of the blade harder toward her, and it nicks her flesh just slightly.
A drop of blood stains the dark iron.
I struggle through it all with wide, desperate eyes, but it all happens so fast.
Nyra jerks the weapon from my hand, and in a single stroke, she slices the blade from her chin to the corner of her brow.
The scream that cuts from her lungs cleaves through my own chest.
“Nyra.” I’m gasping out her name as I kick and beat against the arms that hold me. All I see is her blood, and all I hear is her hurt. “Nyra!” I’m screaming for her, but she isn’t aware of me at all as she stares down at the bloody dagger in her unsteady hand.
Ravar is fighting me as I’m fighting him, and it’s the most chaotic moment of emotions flooding my mind and soul.
Then a gleam of blackness walks from the shadows. A slender arm reaches forward. Her ebony nails wrap around the hilt. And in the single blink of an eye, the Night Witch slings the dagger right at me.
It twirls like a dance suspended in time. A shine of candlelight gleams across its edge like fire sparking in the darkest sea. It’s all I see, and I can’t think about how she and I got here in this mess of our lives.
But at the last moment, my head turns as far as Ravar’s hold on me will allow it.
A thudding sound hits hard. I stumble on my feet. He never lets me go. The fall to the ground is quick. The pretty lace of my gown catches in my kicking feet. His arms are viced around me so tightly I feel I can’t breathe. The impact beneath me is hard and jarring. My skull cracks into the rock.
I blink through the pain and it’s then that I realize I’m looking into the cruelest eyes. His body broke my fall. The Prince’s blood soaks into me warmly as he continues to hold me even as the light in his dark eyes fades little by little. His gaze clings to mine, and a whisper is caught in his chest from where the blade is embedded into his heart.
“She—she’ll kill you too,” he murmurs with a deadly smile.
Those words haunt through my mind as I stare up at the cavernous ceiling above. Applause—real applause—screams through the room as people chant for the queen they lost centuries ago.
The attention of the High Hell look down on me as the three hellacious shifters crowd around me to look for wounds.
There are none physically.
