She expected the smack would have come much sooner, but the shock of it was still the same. Her head jerked to the side, her cheek already throbbing and burning. She could feel a warm trickle of sticky wetness rolling down her cheek, the cut from one of his many rings stinging. “That parasite is anabomination."He snarled. “He is not my son—he is not myLilith.”
“Heis.” Nymiria’s voice was a dangerously low growl, her eyes vicious when they landed on him again. “He is your son and you are terrified of it—terrified of the fact that his face will be the first you see when youdie. Not your mother’s, not your father’s, not Camalia’s or Lilith’s—his.” She released a breathy, wild laugh at the paleness of his face. “And you know that he will deliver whatever justice he deems fit. Youknowthat he will torture you for hundreds, thousands, perhaps amillionyears if he sees fit to do so.”
“You have no idea what you are saying—”
“But I do. I know exactly why you wanted him killed. You saw what he could do with his power and itscaredyou. You wanted to believe that it wasn’t true, that Lilith and the gods were wrong, but then you saw it with your own eyes and you knew that your fate would be dealt to you by the hands of a boy that had to hold his dying mother in her final moments. You realized that justice would be delivered by a boy that burned his own hands because he couldn’t get the feeling of his mother’s blood off of them—a boy so wild with rage and sorrow that he forced you to watch as the skin melted away from the tips of his fingers—”
“ENOUGH!” Dorid bellowed. The second strike to her face was enough to silence her, but it did not erase the undiluted ire from her eyes. “That is enough, youwitch.” His whole body trembled as he walked, his hand covering his mouth as he went. He stood on the other side of the desk, his face red and his breathingheavy. When he was finally able to regulate his breathing, he turned to her again. “You used to be such a sweet girl.” His eyes were glazed, as if he were trapped in a memory. “You’ve become soangry, Nymiria. It is unsettling.”
She tried to conceal the trembling of her hands, to soothe the furious pounding of her heart. “Could you imagine bending and breaking something, over and over again for ten years, and having the nerve to ask why it no longer looks the same?” She asked.
He had been looking at his hands when she started speaking, but the moment her voice quieted, Dorid lifted his eyes to hers. And for the first time, in all of the time she’d known him, she saw tears in his eyes. “You would think I learned my lesson by now, wouldn’t you?” His fingers curled around a piece of paper, looked to have been torn from an old sketchbook. The page was yellowed and frayed and the corners, the worn creases in the fold signifying that the paper had been well-loved. Opened and closed multiple times, over and over again, until the creases were nearly ripped. She chose not to focus on it.
Nymiria shook her head slowly, her fist tightening around the skirt of her dress. “Men like you never learn your lessons. You just continue making the same mistakes and then you die.” Silence fell between them, a silence so loud that her ears could vaguely hear the loud pulsing of Dorid’s heart. He was terrified. Whether it was of himself or of her, she couldn’t be sure. It did not matter. “Your father hurt you, didn’t he?” She asked.
“Nymiria, I’m warning you—”
“This is all you know, Dorid. Perhaps you believed things would be different, that you could have been different from the man that sired you. Perhaps that is why you loved Lilith so much—because she made you feel real love for the first time in your whole life.” He covered his face, shielded his eyes from her. “Youwanted to run away with her and become someone else, but you didn’t. Why?”
Dorid’s shoulders shook, his whole body seemingly weighing too much because he was now grappling at the desk to keep his large form upright. “Is this my judgement day, Nymiria? Is that what this is?” He demanded weakly. “You want me to admit my sins to you—fine! I wanted to be accepted by Lilith’s people, by her blood and her queen, but they would not have me! Not when I wasthat man’sson. So I got angry and I became exactly what I hated—I became greedy and selfish and I wantedeverything, Nymiria, I wanted itall. So I killed them. I caged them up. And it felt good to do it, so I did it some more.” He was stumbling forward, falling to his knees in front of her and gripping her hands. “I didn’t believe people when they told me that too much power could change you, I truly didn’t. But then I looked in the mirror one morning and saw amonsterstaring back at me. A monster with my face and my eyes. So Ibecame it. Because it was already too late for me to save myself. I’d done too much damage. Power is like medicine, Nymiria. If given in small doses, it can comfort the aches and pains of a pitiful soul. But too much… and it is poison.” His head fell into her lap, sobs shaking the entire large form of his body. Dorid stuffed the worn piece of paper into her hand, folding her fingers over its edges. Batting his hands away from her, Nymiria lifted the paper and unfolded it.
The woman in the picture was unmistakable. The features she bore were features that Nymiria had come to know as her home—the sharp angles of that face, the swell of those lips. Lilith. She was sitting in what looked to be a chair, her robe falling open just enough to reveal the large swell of her belly. Her head was turned to the side, her perfect jaw angled in the direction of a window. “Ilovedher.” Dorid trembled. “But I knew. Iknew.He would be my ruin.”
She could hear the guards behind her shifting uncomfortably. The one that’d been to the left of her upon her arrival, the larger of the two, moved to Dorid’s side. Nymiria looked up at him, sucking in a deep breath when she saw the shape of the man’s eyes.
He slowly lifted the helm from his head and gently placed it on the desk. The man held Nymiria’s gaze, giving her a soft smile as he slowly pulled a knife from the holster at his side. The other guard behind her did not move, and while Nymiria was curious to see the identity of the other person, she kept her eyes trained on Oran.
Dorid was still sobbing when Oran reached his hand forward and gripped his father’s hair. With a swift jerk, the king’s head was pulled back, his eyes wide as they turned to his son.
“Oran—”
She’d never seen him this enraged. She’d seen him drunk, sad, confused, lost, and hopeless—she’d even seen him angry. But there was nothing she’d ever seen in him that made her believe that Oran was capable of such carnal fury. “A man becomes what he hates, and grows to hate what he once loved. It will be his ruin. His death.” Oran stated through bared teeth. “Do you know who wrote that?”
The king shook his head. “N-no. No, I don’t. Oran, please, put the knife down so that we can talk.”
“I was done talking to you the moment I found her body in yourfuckingvault.” Oran pressed the edge of his knife to the large lump at the center of Dorid’s throat. “She didn’t deserve the death you dealt her. She wasgood. Her and Lilith both—you deserved neither of them, just as you never deserved me or my brother.” Tugging sharply, Oran pulled Dorid’s head back further. Oran’s eyes were aflame with a tempest of emotions. Nymiria could see it all, from the deep sadness that’d plagued him since they left Yaar, to the unbridled satisfaction he wasgaining from seeing his father on his knees—so weak and so terribly afraid. “Lilith wrote it. She wrote it in the journal she saved for Aziel, one detailing how one of us would bring an end to your pathetic excuse of a life. It is so laughable how ridiculously wrong you were about him, do you know that? Because Aziel isnotyour ruin.I am.”
“I cried when both of you were born.” Dorid swallowed. The lump at the center of his throat bobbed across the tip of the blade, a line of blood trickling in its wake. “I knew that there was something rotten in me, son. I knew it the moment I looked at both your face and your brother’s…” He looked as if he were going to be sick, but based upon the look of disbelief that Nymiria and Oran exchanged, his words were meaningless. There was nothing he could say or do that could change the years of torment, the years of absoluteevilthat he unleashed upon those who did not deserve it. All in the name of power.
Oran glanced between Nymiria and the knife at his father’s throat. “Tell me when.” He begged.
Nymiria wasn’t sure what she should say. He looked at her so expectantly—a pleading glance that made the anger in her heart dissipate for just a few short moments. “You don’t have to do it, Oran.” She said in a whisper. “It won’t bring an end to the pain.”
“What about the anger?” He begged. “Does it do anything for that?”
She remembered holding the blade to her own mother’s throat. She remembered the proud look in Inasha’s eyes fading to that brief look of fear the moment she slid the knife across her neck. Inasha never thought that Nymiria was capable of it.Nymirianever thought that she was capable of it. And had it not been for Aziel—had it not been for the fact that her mother had wounded him so deeply, she probably never would have had the nerve. She was angry. She was so, so angry that all she could see was red.
And then there was relief.
As Inasha Celentas’s blood spilled over the edge of the dagger and onto her fingers, Nymiria felt the tension in the air dissipate. She felt all of Aziel’s fear slip away. Everything that bound him to that woman, that kept him submissive, was gone. But the anger was still there. Even now, as Nymiria thought of her mother, as she remembered her pride and hatefulness and all that she’d done, Nymiria felt it all over again.
“Do it anyway.” Nymiria said, finally. “He’s not going to leave this room a changed man, Oran. Do it regardless. And if you don’t want to, letme.”
It was all the confirmation that Oran needed. Even though Dorid protested, even though he squirmed and writhed and clawed at Nymiria in hopes that she would save him…
Oran did it. He slid the knife across Dorid’s neck, made sure that his head stayed tilted back as his lifeforce spilled through the cut. It sprayed against the already-ruined skirts of Nymiria’s dress, it cascaded down like an endless fountain and pooled around her feet.
Dorid did not fight. Perhaps, in those final moments, he accepted his fate as an atonement for all the evil things he’d done and for the pain he caused. He didn’t helplessly claw at the wound the way her mother had. But Inasha was different. She believed she was right, even in death.
