MARIK
The cambion sprints toward me.I spin and crash my sword through its neck. Its head goes flying, landing with a thud halfway across the training center. Three more come. I run toward them and leap, lobbing their heads off in one motion.
Another group runs toward me, but I hold my hand up. They come to a stop.
“Go back to your creator,” I mutter. They skitter away, all of them moving in unison and out the doors. Back to Cora. I clean their blood from the sword and sheath it.
I hate those fucking things. I always have. When Cora first showed them to me, my skin crawled. But they get the job done and they’re easy to control. Since I no longer have a brother to train with, I’ve been using them to spar with. But all they know to do is run and try to bite. Elle is better at attacking me.
I exhale a frustrated sigh. My thoughts won’t stop. I came to the training center to get my mind off everything and yet, here I am thinking about Elle again.
How is she my mate?
How did I get this all so fucking wrong?
Whatthe hell have I done?
From the time I was little, my parents pushed the ideas of power and control. Power over everyone. Control over everything. They knew Asmo would take over our House when the time came, but they wanted me to have something of my own. I just didn’t know it would be this.
Despite all they did to us, they did care for us in their own way. Asmo has always resented them for the way we were raised, but not me.
It made us stronger.
It left me always desiring more, something Asmo has never had to think about. He was always destined to rule. He’s never had to consider how he’s going to leave a legacy behind, how he’ll be remembered in House Serpent history.
I have.
When my parents first agreed to work with Cora, I was excited. It was a chance for me to have a future of my own. And now, I finally have it all. Power. Control.
But none of it matters because there’s something inside me that I have no control over, and I can feel it all slipping away.
“Fuck!” I hurl the sword at the window. It collides, but the window doesn’t break.
I want to tear my hair out.
I stomp to the window and snatch the sword from the ground. The stairway to the weapons room is dark, but I descend anyway.
When we were younger, Asmo and I were forced to stay in the dungeons for weeks without any form of light. All to “sharpen our senses.” We were five. But it worked.
Even so, dungeons and basements have unsettled me ever since. But I force myself to overcome the fear, the discomfort, as I always have. My eyes acclimate within seconds and I locate the weapons door, placing my palm flat on its surface. It unlocks and I toss the sword on the floor. Someone else will put it back. Probably.
The door clicks shut behind me as I exit and ascend the stairs. Vicente is waiting for me when I return. I could smell his greasy hair from the other room. He stares at the decapitated cambion bodies littering the floor.
“Vicente,” I mutter in greeting.
He whirls, his gaze flicking to the cambion blood on my shirt, then to my face. “Your Highness,” he snivels before forming a bow.
“What do you want?”
“Cora wants to see you.”
Of course Cora wants to see me. She always wants to see me. “Where is she?”
“In her bedroom, sir,” Vicente says with a grin.
I want to tell him he can go service her, then. No, what I really want is to fall to my knees and beg the Mother—or the Sister—to kill me.
“Thank you, Vicente,” I say, less so in gratitude and more so in dismissal. I grab two of the cambion bodies and haul them toward the door. Vicente clears his throat. I stop and turn back to him. “Yes?”
