Page 143 of To Bleed A Kingdom

Darius jabs a finger in my direction. “I don’t want that thing in my city any longer.”

That thing. I’m a thing now. Not a lover, not a friend, not even a person. Just another cursed beast. Tears burn at the back of my eyes and I swallow back the cry that wants to escape.

“She saved us,” Griffin says calmly, unflinching from Darius’ wrath. “They all did.”

Darius glances back at us, coldly passing his gaze over me and my companions. I know what he sees. My glowing eyes and fangs. Amara’s single starlight jewel. Zander’s illuminated veins. Tristan’s strange markings. All of us are so different from them, so foreign. A dangerous unknown.

He curls his lip in contempt and says gruffly, “Be gone by dawn.” Then he turns his back on me, calling out to his guards as he moves deeper into the human district.

Jaw aching from his punishing grip, I watch Darius with ragged breaths, reliving every moment of this horrid night. Each hateful word he spoke to me slashes at my heart, drenching my soul in blood and anguish. Unable to bear it any longer, I turn to leave, but find the red-haired fae blocking my path.

“Glowing eyes.” He sucks in a breath. “I know you.”

Tiger shifter.

“You don’t,” I reply as I brush past him, trying to hold back the tears as I pass the Gods Garden, clamping down on the sobs in my throat when I leave the market district. But as I near the inn, my vision becomes blurry and the tears begin to spill over.

“Lena, wait!” Amara calls out.

Pausing on the porch steps, I glance back at a solemn-faced Amara, with Zander and Tristan standing at her back.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I wipe away my tears. “I should've known better." Shaking my head with a watery chuckle, I add, “The cursed are forever damned.”

Anger flashes in her eyes. “You are not cursed; you’re blessed. Any being with two eyes and a heart would know that.”

“Darius has a heart.” Biting my lip, my voice cracks. “It's just not meant for me."

“Lena…” Her face falls and she ascends the steps, but pauses mid-step and grits her teeth when I stop her with a raised palm. “I’ll kill him for this.”

“No,” I reply harshly, recalling Zenith’s prophetic words. “He is not to be harmed.”

Amara’s lips flatten, but she nods in acquiescence.

Once I’m certain Amara will heed my command, I shut my eyes and drop my head back on the beam at the top of the steps, slowly stitching myself together as I create another scar in addition to the sewn gashes already strewn across my patchwork heart.

With an audible sniff, I open my eyes and push off the beam. “Zander, Tristan, I want you two to dispatch any remaining Soulless in the city. Amara and I will pack up and salvage what we can.”

Glancing up at the smoking, gaping hole where our rooms used to be, surveying the destruction I caused in my panic, my tears instantly dry as my grief twists into rage.

Darius had the audacity to accuse me of betraying him, when he’s the one who caged me. He bound and chained me like the monster he believes me to be, knowing the torment it would cause, feeling the sheer agony of my pain through our bond. Yet he did it anyway. But that’s alright. I now know what type of person he is and realize how wrong I was about him. It'll make everything that follows that much easier.

Because creatures like me aren’t meant to be caged. Only unleashed.

Chapter 31

Darius

“Yours,” Lena whispers, pressing her forehead against mine. “Only yours.”

Clenching my hand around iron, I shove the memory aside, wrenching it from my mind and shredding it to a mutilated heap, the same as Lena has twisted me. I replace it with the image of her fangs and glowing eyes. Of her tearing a Soulless’ head off with her bare hands. The sounds of her eerie hiss.

Feeling that ache in my chest begin to throb, I glance back at Kace and Griffin as I pull open the door to my mother’s meeting room.

Adelphia paces back and forth before her throne. Garbed in a thin dressing gown and her long blonde hair draped loose across her shoulders, it's apparent that news of the attack drew her from her bed. Likewise for Theon, who sits before the stone table, eyes at half-mast as he rests his chin in his palm. Neither of them take notice of our arrival.

A petite blonde suddenly smacks into my chest.

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