Page 173 of Black Sea

“So, don’t worry,” Nauriel added tartly. “You won’t live a miserable existence without me.”

“Apparently, I’ve lived a miserable life without realizing it until I met you,” I responded impulsively, in a low, resentful tone.

The glow inside Calien’s Crystal started to pulse, catching my attention. It was fading, damn it.

When I glanced at the elf again, her expression was the picture of deep disappointment.

“You just want the Crystal,” she said, extending the incision on her neck a bit more.

I impulsively stepped forward. A spike shot toward me, stopping just an inch from my stomach. I looked at it with such burning anger that the glass began to sizzle, then my gaze flicked to my mate.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said, my voice brimming with ever more ire.

Against her.

Against that Calien bitch.

Against myself for how easily I had spoken those words, for the tumult of emotions that was unleashing within me. The emotions I was letting run wild.

The arm Nauriel was using to hold up the barrier trembled. She gnashed her teeth to stay in place, her eyes showing a pain so intense it tore my soul to pieces.

“I. Don’t. Believe. You. Anymore,” she said angrily as she cried.

Her skin fully opened under the dagger, now just millimeters from the exposed carotid artery.

I was running out of time.

So, resisting the scratchy chaos of darkness, resisting the roaring fit of hatred urging me to abandon the Crystal and kill Nauriel and the entire elven people to seek revenge on the Spirits, I raised my bleeding hands in surrender.

And I slowly knelt before the one I loved.

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I couldn’t believe my eyes. Seeing him on his knees with arms spread and bloodied palms facing upward, terrified me.

Because, although his pose, there was nothing submissive about him.

His expression embodied a boundless and relentless and monstrous and lethal hatred. His face twisted with spasms, almost as if something inside him was struggling with a deafening screech.

I should end it immediately. The artery was just a breath away from the blade. Half a second, and he wouldn’t be able to heal me in any way.

Yet, even as I commanded my arm to make the final, deadly move, my muscles refused to obey.

There was something in the violence his gaze was hurling at me that prevented me from finishing my task.

Something so powerful that, very slowly, I lowered the hand I was controlling the shield with.

A hole opened at the top of the glass bubble, which gradually began to retract like water at my feet along with the stalagmite circle until it vanished. All the energy that the barrier had absorbed from me was returned, hitting my wavering body like a shockwave. The bleeding from my ears, eyes, nose, and mouth ceased.

Nevertheless, I kept the dagger at my throat.

Mornon’s eyes never left mine as my heart rioted against my ribs to the point that I feared it would break through them to surrender itself to the one it belonged to.

I couldn’t trust him. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t make that mistake for the umpteenth time. He was just tricking me once more. In an instant, he would lunge at me, immobilize me, and in the next, we would disappear into thin air.

And his reign of terror would truly begin.

No, I would not give in now. But as I took my last breath before severing the carotid artery, Mornon closed his eyes.