Stellen struck at a downward trajectory. The same angle that my mother used when she tried to end me.
That fluke of fate must have kept my heart intact during Stellen’s attack.
Monstrous heart that it is.
My hands leave my chest, rising to grip my head as I rock forward under the weight of heavy impulses and memories I want to tear apart—shred them, make them not real.
A nightmare I need to wake up from.
I groan against the nauseating reality, a sound drowned out in my mind by the memory of Thyra’s strangled cry. She’d tried to crawl toward me through a snowstorm, her speech thready and plucked away by the wind while Stellen had prepared to cleave my head from my shoulders.
She begged him to spare my life.
A life I don’t deserve.
My hands drop away from my head, and my shoulders slump.
Stellen was right to refuse her. I would not have shown him any mercy had our positions been reversed.
But something saved me…
My forehead creases at the blank in my memory.
Stellen raised his sword for the killing blow, and that’s all I remember before everything went dark and?—
My focus snaps up to the ice wall behind me.
Azul sits silently on top of it, right where I couldn’t see him without turning, a location I’m sure was a deliberate choice on his part.
His wings remain folded, but in contrast to his quiet form, his crimson eyes are fiercely narrowed at me, glaring and accusatory.
My head bows under the weight of his silent judgment.
I deserve it.
Aside from what I did to Thyra, I tried to sever Azul’s wing from his body—I remember that part—although the gash appears to have healed, the flesh knitted back together.
His talons scrabble at the ice, shattering a chunk of it as he spreads his wings and lifts into the air, gliding down to the ground in front of me, his glower unrelenting.
I want to ask him where Thyra is.
I need to confirm that Stellen has her. The very fact that Azul is here with me tells me Thyra can’t stillbe in the bloodlands—if vampyrs had somehow overpowered Stellen and taken her, Azul wouldn’t waste his time with me.
I swallow my questions.
The threatening scrape of his talons along the ground warns me he won’t give me any information until I acknowledge what could now be the most painful truth of my life.
“I hurt her.” My voice is a rasp, my vocal cords strained. “I betrayed Thyra. She gave me kindness. I gave her pain.”
The memory of my worst sin strikes back at me, the sickeningly euphoric descent of my fangs into Thyra’s neck and the warm gush of her blood in my mouth.
The way I’d asked her:is this monstrous enough for you?
Her blood tasted like roses before it burned my mouth, scorching my throat and my insides, cutting across my tongue like knives.
Sweet knives.
A wave of nausea billows through me, and my stomach heaves.
