Why had I invited her in when I’d kept all the others far, far away?
Why did she intrigue me when no one else ever had?
She was the first person in my entire miserable life who wanted nothing from me.
Not my blood, my life, my company, my legacy, or my lineage.
And that...that did something to me far, far worse than the strangeness of her soothing company.
Being near her eased my constant pain, but the more time I spent with her, the more a different kind of pain appeared.
One that had no cure.
One that grew worse every time we talked.
And for the first time in my pathetic life, I wanted totouch.
I wanted to know what it would be like to give in to the urges catching fire inside me.
I wanted to crack open her head and learn everything she kept hidden.
I wanted to find a way to stop whatever this was because if I didn’t—
Planting my palms on the parapet, I bared my teeth at the night.
I clawed at the stone as another siphoning of pain from the vitalsync core drenched my system.
I hated that she hurt...like me.
I hated that I recognised her agony and sympathised with my enemy.
But what I hated the most was that sheaffectedme.
She drove me into a different kind of madness.
And one day soon, I’d break.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I SMILED AS I RECOGNISED THE tell-tale thud of heavy predator paws.
Right on time.
The night had been silent from Lucien hunting, and I’d spent the day mopping all the corridors in the palace, so I was both achy and drowsy, but sleep remained elusive until my friend arrived.
Swinging my legs down from where I sat by the window, I locked eyes with the golden orbs of Lucien’s panther. “You came.”
Whisper gave a toothy grin and slunk through the shadows to my side.
Somehow, another two days had passed, adding to the illusion of normalcy.
I’d learned to live inside this gilded cage—working, cleaning, pretending I wasn’t becoming mildly obsessed with the monster living within it.
Maybe all my travelling before this had given me the ability to find a home wherever I stopped for a time.
Maybe it was the connection I’d built with Whisper.
Or maybe it was just the madness setting in.
