Starving me.
Dimming my light. Stealing my voice. Barricading my powers under mountains of self-doubt and self-loathing.
And now Killian.
At least my family never pretended to love me. Never promised me the world, the stars, and the moon, only to give me heartbreak instead.
I blink my tears away, and I’m shocked at the dark canvas of the night sky, glittering with millions of stars. I’ve never seen so many stars at once, and it makes me feel small. Like all my troubles, heavy as they are on my soul, they’re insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We’re just fucking specks of dust compared to the vastness of the universe.
If Imiryion falls, if Aurora wins and this realm shatters, the universe will still go on as if nothing happened.
What’s the point then?
If our existence is so inconsequential, is it even worth it?
All this pain.
All this suffering.
It amounts to nothing.
Frustration bubbles up in my chest, and I close my eyes, letting a curling scream out to the high heavens. My shadows explode from my skin, rushing out of me in dark ripples, stretching far and wide, covering everything in blackness. They pour and pour out of me like a tidal wave of numbing despair that blankets the world around me.
Lost as I am in my grief and my rage, I don’t hear him coming.
All of a sudden, a vicious force tackles me to the ground, and I grab onto his shoulders, dragging him down with me. We roll over the side of the dune, sand flying everywhere, until I land on my back, Killian on top of me, heaving, his pupils blown out in anger.
“Get off me, you brute,” I snarl, wiggling my body as I try to escape from under him.
“No.”
My blood boils at the arrogant finality in that single word. He thinks he can dominate and manhandle me whichever way he wants?
Fuck him.
I clench my fist and draw it back with quick reflexes, and unlike the last time I tried this when we had just met, I’m stronger and faster now, landing a punch square in his nose. It crunches loudly under my knuckles, and blood pours from his nostrils as the force of the blow throws him off me. I don’t lose momentum and hurl myself on top of his body, straddling his hips as I continue to land punches to his chest and jaw.
“What the fuck, Aimee,” he grunts between hits.
“Fuck you, asshole. You don’t get to push me around like some easily discarded rag doll.”
He catches my wrists and pins them against our bodies, bringing me closer to his disheveled face. His nose is already healing thanks to his vampiric powers, but I can smell the tang of iron coating his lips, his chin, his neck.
“That’s it, umbra. Show me your true colors. The vicious little thing you really are,” he growls through clenched teeth. Loathing and arousal float through his ebony eyes, and his hard cock nudges my thigh where I’m pressed against him.
The motherfucker gets a kick out of this, doesn’t he?
Can I blame him, though?
Not really. Not when heat spreads from my core, unfurling inside my body until I’m burning up like a cursed torchlight made from flesh and desire.
I try to wrestle my hands free, but it’s no use. He has me in a vice grip, and it’s only becoming more painful the more I struggle.
“I already showed you who I am, Killian. I told you who I was, and you threw me away,” I say, my voice laced with venom.
“But that’s the thing, Aimee. You didn’t,” he answers back, spitting blood. “You showed me the version you wanted me to see, and I gobbled it up like an Akaoridamn fool.”
“No,” I say, my voice barely a whisper despite the chaos roaring inside me. “I told you about my trauma. Tried to warn you about my sister in the best way I could. I really—”
