I was ruined.
Drawn to pain and suffering, lusting for freedom, if only to wreak havoc. Just so I might drink down the fumes of suffering caused by my own hand, until I was cloaked in swathes of unlimited power.
Nausea made me shiver.
Loathing what I was, rejecting it, I clenched my fists and jaw. Again and again and again.
But the empath forced my head to turn toward this woman reeking of soft, priestess magic for nothing more than the promise that I might know it again.
Just one sip.
Just once more…
Above me, a leviathan stirred. Winding coils of pure wrath about my throat. Forbidding my impulse—feeding my desire with the billowing fumes of elite energy more potent than any other.
Because I was allowed to drink—as long it was fromhim.
I swallowed, and it was thick.
Did she suffer?
Unsure if Carly had come seeking honesty or platitudes, I chose the latter.
And lied.
“No,” I said. “It was… quick.”
Carly pressed her hand to her heart. Lashes sparkling with what I might only assume was relief, she gobbled down my answer in a single, greedy swallow. And then, “She’s in the casket, you know.”
I jerked. Eyes flicking back to her face once more.
“It’s a secret.” She grinned, showing teeth. “One poorly kept. There wasn’t enough of the man to lend the casket any weight, so…” Shrugging, she picked at a fleck on her thigh, then said, “Even the worst Head Priestess shouldn’t be buried, much less one ofherstatus.”
I hummed, but that was all.
“It’s a shame we weren’t permitted to preform the proper burial rituals, but given the circumstances… I’m sure she understands.”
From the opposite end of the courtyard, the Lieutenant General made his grand appearance, and with him, a hush fell upon the crowd of grievers. Silence punctuated by the choked sobs of the Tilcot widow, it was the sort of quiet that felt charged. Heavy.
To the Caledonians, it was merely the scent of their divine privilege. Evidence of their right to rule.
But my eye went to the wraith floating in Lieutenant General Hastings’ shadow. To the nameless girl with burnished gold poisoning her blood. The girl who’d been a priestess, whose eyes were black, and whose joints sagged beneath the weight of limp, useless arms.
“It’s a desecration,” Carly murmured, and I flinched, willing her to be silent. Willing her voice to remain unheard in the presence of a man who wanted to clap a set of suppressors on my wrists. A man who wanted to watch me strangle on a collar worse than anything I could imagine.
I ran my fingers through grass still damp with dew, sweating freely in the chilly morning.
I just had to get through the day.
The Lieutenant General took his place at the podium, then turned to place big hands on the casket gleaming in the sunlight. Paying respects where they were due.
Because General Harper Tilcot hadn’t deserved such pomp and show.
But Sasha had been a master.
Turning once more, the Lieutenant General let those stormy grey eyes pass over his audience. “We are gathered here today to bid farewell to a great man. General Harper Tilcot—”
His widow cried out, guttural sobs shaking her frame hard enough that her chair groaned in protest and Carina draped her arms around those trembling shoulders. Cooing nonsense into her ear with artfully painted lips.
