An oomph escapes his lips, and he makes no move to get up.
“I’m done for, Aimee. Please have mercy. Gods, you’re killing me since you got your powers.”
I lower myself onto the mat next to him, sitting cross-legged and playing with small tendrils of dark shadows weaving through my fingers.
“It’s not enough, Blaise. I need to be prepared for my sister. For war.”
I expect the first prickles of my anxiety to show their ugly heads, but the fear-feeding monster has quieted down to a muted whisper since I got my powers. It’s like my shadows snuff out the darkness from inside my brain. They keep the demons at bay. At moments, the silence of my once tumultuous thoughts is as disconcerting as the numb-inducing fear that used to plague me at all hours.
“It will never feel enough, Aimee. Not after what that bitch did to you.” Blaise gets up on one elbow, regarding me with his penetrating azure gaze. I know what he’s thinking, but not saying. After years of trauma endured at the hands of my twin, and last month’s revelation that she is in fact Morweena—the ominous being hell-bent on destroying the whole realm, I will never feel fully prepared to face her, no matter how much I train, no matter how powerful I am now.
“It’s enough for today, Aimee. You’ve been doing nothing but training for the last two weeks. Sometimes I wonder if you even sleep anymore, or you just faint on the mat, and then, when you come back to your senses, you just keep going. It’s a bit insane, kitty. You’ve got to stop.”
“I’ll stop when this war is over and we’ve won, Blaise. We have the onpyrs and the Fae against us. It’s no child’s play,” I say with a huff. “Besides, it’s not like I have anything else to do anymore, do I?”
I hate the way Blaise’s gaze softens, not with pity per se, but with empathy. He’s been trying to make Killian see reason, to no avail. That motherfucker Vampire King still won’t talk to me even after over two weeks. Even knowing we need each other in order to defeat my evil sister.
Fine. Whatever.
I don’t care anymore. If he wants to hate me for all eternity for withholding my sister’s sinister nature and what she did to me growing up, then so be it. It’s not like I knew Aurora and Morweena were the same wretched creature. All I knew was that my sister, the supposed savior of Imiryion, was a cruel, horrible person with no ounce of kindness in her bones. She abused and tortured me for years on end, orchestrating my rape by herhenchmen, killing my pup when we were nine, belittling me constantly, eroding my self-worth and drilling into me that I was not deserving of love.
So, excuse me if I wasn’t prepared to shout out my trauma from the crenels of Sangeries.
“He’ll come around, kitty. Just give him some time. For all his thousand years, he’s not necessarily the most-in-tune-with-his-emotions vampire.”
“Whatever, Blaise.” I scrunch up my nose in dismay. “I fucked up, and I take responsibility. He hates me now, fine. I will not be pining in the corners of the castle for him, hoping one day he wakes up and decides I’m not bad. There are more crucial matters to focus on, like preparing for whatever comes next. I just hope he’ll realize we need to kill my sister together. I’m convinced the prophecy speaks of our combined powers defeating Aurora.”
My dark shadows tug under my skin, slithering up and down my arms in discontent. The realization that my shadows and I have different opinions about Killian still baffles me. They yearn for him with a blinding intensity that suffocates me most of the time. I want to focus on squashing the onpyrs, while my newfound powers seem to only care about that maddening vampire.
It’s as if they stem from a part of my soul that can’t exist without him.
A flashback of that morning before everything went up in flames crosses my mind.
His heartbreakingly beautiful face swirls around my brain in vivid detail. That rugged jawline peppered with dark stubble. Those bottomless onyx depths, where one could get lost and beg the heavens never to be found again.
His dazzling smile as he peppered me with kisses and vowed his eternal affection.
So much for the eternal part.
Disappointment coils around my heart like a spiked shackle, clenching it in a painful grip at the fact that I was right.
His love was fickle, despite his swoon-worthy declarations of devotion.
The knowledge that I played my part in shattering that beautiful illusion doesn’t escape me, though. I’m not blameless, and I’m not pretending to be. But didn’t I deserve to be allowed an explanation at least? A chance to beg for forgiveness?
I’m past the begging part now.
“I will not tell you to stop acting like you don’t care, but we both know you do, Aimee. I also won’t tell you to go easy on him when he finally gets his head out of his ass, because I will enjoy tremendously seeing him grovel at your feet. Just make sure I have a front-row seat for said groveling. I’ll even give you pointers if you need me to,” Blaise says in his typical singsong voice.
A very unladylike snort escapes my lips, and we both start laughing despite the heavy dread that permeates the castle walls and my mind constantly.
At least I have Blaise in my corner. I couldn’t have wished for a better friend.
“Thank you, Blaise. For not giving up on me like he did. For being here day in and day out and letting me kick your ass on the mat when I’m sure you have better things to do. Spy things.”
“I love you think so highly of me, kitty cat, as to believe I’m letting you win on purpose. But you’re beating me all on your own. You’re a force to be reckoned with. You just need to work a bit more on that confidence, mmm?” he says with a knowing smirk painting his lips, before standing up and offering gallantly a hand for me to rise as well.
I accept his help and get up before dusting off my leather-covered thighs.
