“My hope lies with you, Asha. Don’t break my hope.” She presses her lips together, her eyes beseeching me. “You have to let the Vandawolf go.”
I can’t.
So help me… Ican’t.
My only rationalization is an instinct. Because surely, it’s true that I could never love a man who held me in a cage in the sky.
All I have is an undeniable and overpowering sense that I need to keep him alive. I don’t even know if it’s for me anymore or for some other reason.
My only certainty is that I will fight any battle to ensure he lives.
I try to speak past the constriction in my throat. Trying one last time. “Tamra, please. I kept him alive when he should have died. I fought the humans and escaped them. I carried him through the wasteland, even though I should have failed… All through it, he stayed alive. He needs to live.”
My voice breaks, but I force myself to continue. “I have fought and I have killed and I have bled…”
I look up at my sister, to where she stands in a position of power over me, and I beg her. “Please.”
She takes another step back. Now, her voice is harder than I’ve ever heard it. My sister, who doesn’t have a heart of darkness like mine, is speaking words I never expected to fall from her lips.
“I won’t do it, Asha. Don’t ask me again.”
As I listen, everything around me seems to drop away.
A horrible thought rises within my mind.
I couldmakeher do it.
All it would take is to lay my hand on her.
I could make her do it.
I could fucking… make her…
But I would never hurt my sister like that because I love her. And the Vandawolf was right.
Love is more powerful than hate.
I rock forward, my arms clutched around my stomach, too much fury billowing up within me to contain it.
My pain has nowhere to go but into a scream.
I roar it out, a frightful sound that echoes around and around the ballroom.
Tamra jumps, the watching fae lose their garishly eager smiles, and the Queen herself jolts backward.
I pour all of my pain into my voice, knowing that when I stop, I’ll have to face what I have to do.
So I scream and scream until my chest is empty of air and I have no choice but to draw breath and prepare for the terrible act that will follow.
Chapter15
As if my scream dragged him back to consciousness, the Vandawolf stirs and his low growl sounds. “Asha.”
His eyes open, revealing the amber iris of his left eye. It’s pale and both eyes are blank, just as they were this morning.
His blindness hasn’t changed.
The sight of his wolfish features causes a stir among the nearest fae, their whispers becoming a hum around me.
