Silas deflected a blow from William, sending us back toward the castle as he created the necessary distance between William and us. William hunched over against one of the statues, clouds of ice spilling from his lips. Disdain glinted high upon his brow. Silas set me down gently on the cobblestone at the very moment William caught his second wind.
“You whore, letting this monster taint you,” William spat, sauntering closer with the slim blade’s malicious glint bouncing off in silver light onto the statues. “I could have given you everything, had you been a good little girl. I would have been a man of respect and power with you by my side had you not run off with a beast.”
I stood my ground, the knife flush against my thigh.
This man wanted my life in the worst way. To control me, to make me nothing more than a doll. I had been a doll for much of my life. To uphold the lie that began with my father, a lie that William had pursued to his own end goals.
William stood paces away from me, bloodlust suspended in the air.
I sensed Silas’s own uneasiness behind me.
William adjusted the knife high. “I could have given you everything. You brought this on yourself.”
William brought down his arm, arching it high above me.
He missed.
I plunged my own knife into his chest, stumblinginto him.
“Same to you.”
The knife clattered to the ground with his gaze drawn toward his chest and the instrument of death protruding out from it. Blood spurted slowly from the wound, crimson coating my hand.
William gasped, pushing me away, dooming himself.
Blood swelled from the wound, a river of crimson coating the gray suit jacket in slick black.
William dropped to his knees, arm outreached as the realization of what I had done played across his face. “You fucking stabbed me. The bitch stabbed me.” He began to laugh, clutching at his chest, then slumped to his side, lifeless eyes casting their unfettered gaze to the ground.
The knife dropped from my hands, legs buckling underneath with the dawning realization of having just killed a man. Bile climbed my throat, staring at the lifeless body of William, the light draining from him.
Silas’s lean body wrapped itself around my shaking form, a hand resting on my hip as he pulled me upward. “Are you alright, Little Dove?”
I nodded, my gaze fixed to the splayed corpse. “I did not think it would come to this.”
“I know.”
I touched Silas’s cheek as my soft skin met with salty tears.
Silas’s rueful expression mirrored my own, of love and affection. Lips crashed against mine, a sweet poison expunged of all unearthly sins.
I cupped his cheeks, breaking the kiss with a heartfelt ache. I ran my thumb across the softness of his lips. I wanted to memorize his face, the firm edges and soft lines of his scars against my fingertips. I leaned closer, letting my forehead touch his, praying he could not hear my thoughts expounding in sorrow.
I pulled away, grabbing William’s knife. “Ask me your question.”
Silas smiled gently, oblivious to what I’d found. “Valeria, do you want to guess my name?”
“I do.”
“Alright, Little Dove. Do not keep me in suspense.”
The pain written in those pages, the pain of the prince who had gone through hell after losing his beloved, the tragedy consuming his life and the life of his people. Until he was nothing more than a stranger to himself in a castle full of ghosts. All trapped by a curse woven by blood only to be unbroken by blood.
“Valeria.”
Silas’s worried voice snapped my attention back.
I gripped the knife, “Silas, I—”
