Still gripping Orion’s collar, Jessina flexes her other hand around the hilt of her knife. “It’s time you learned a permanent lesson.”
Dread crashes through me at the vicious edge to her voice, but Orion just continues glaring up at her with mocking eyes.
“You seem very proud of this beautiful face of yours,” Jessinacontinues. A cruel smile curls her lips as she raises her blade. “It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
I suck in a panicked breath, but Orion just keeps holding her gaze with that arrogant expression on his face.
Jessina places the tip of the knife against his forehead, right above his left eye.
Then she drags it downwards.
A cry rips from my throat.
Across the ground, Draven bellows, “Jessina!”
Orion Nightbane, however, just grits his teeth and glares up at her with his right eye as Jessina cuts right through his left one.
Blood spills down from the long vertical cut that begins above his eyebrow and ends at the top of his cheek underneath.
“Oh, that’s right,” Jessina says with that vicious smile still on her lips. “You have a healer.” She lifts her knife again. “Better make sure.”
Yanking him forward by his collar, she moves her knife to the corner of his left eye.
And then she starts carving it out.
Now, Orionscreams.
It’s a cry of such pure animalistic agony that it stops my heart and punches the air right out of my lungs.
“Jessina!” Draven bellows, and his body jerks as if he is about to lurch forward.
Bane immediately presses the knife harder against my throat. Blood slides down my skin, and Draven jerks to a halt again. Panic and dread shine on his face as he snaps his gaze between me and Orion.
With a wicked smile on her lips, Jessina just continues carving Orion’s eye out of its socket. And because of the prolonged contact with so much iron, he can’t fight back. Can’t do anything to protect himself. All he can do is scream.
And so does Isera.
Lying on the ground, she curls her fingers against the iron as if trying to claw her way towards Orion. Wordless screams of fury tear from her throat with such force that her voice breaks.
“So messy.” Jessina curls her lips in disgust while summoning her magic. Then she encases the ruined remains of Orion’s left eye in ice and simply plucks it out. “That’s better.”
Locking a merciless stare on Orion, she holds his ice-encased eye in front of his face for a second. Then she drops it on the ground and stomps her heel down on it. Ice shatters, and so does whatever remained of the eye, as she grinds it into the iron ground with her heel.
Orion just sits there on his knees, looking shellshocked. There is now only a jagged gaping hole where his left eye used to be, and blood runs down his face from that wound as well as from the long cut across his eyebrow. He stares up at Jessina with his one remaining eye, but his expression is blank. As if his mind is refusing to process what just happened. His mouth remains slightly open, but no sound is making it out anymore.
My head rings. It feels as if giant metal bells are clanging inside my skull. I suck in a deep breath, and my lungs expand in sudden relief since I’ve apparently forgotten to breathe. A short distance from us, Isera has stopped screaming as well, her voice now broken. Her eyes are wide as she stares at Orion.
Jessina takes her foot off his frozen eye. Only pale dust remains of it, ground like powder against the iron.
Above me, Emperor Bane stares at his mate with what looks like shock. His gaze flits down to the destroyed eye, and for a moment, he almost looks conflicted. But the expression disappears so quickly, and my mind is already so messed up, that I can’t tell for certain if I saw it or not.
With one hand still buried in Orion’s collar, Jessina looks up from the ground and raises her knife again. “And now, the other eye.”
For the first time ever, pure terror crashes over Orion’s features.
In all the months that I have known the Unseelie King, I have never seen him scared like this. And this awful fear on his face is so heartbreaking that my lungs cease working again.
“Stop!” Hana suddenly screams.
