Page 123 of Haunted

Even though she was my salvation, her heart is far from wanting me as I once wanted her.

Are you controlling it? Kenrik asks. His presence is a nuisance.

More or less. It’s called a familiar. I enter its mind and can control where it goes and see what it sees.

You’ve tracked down Niawen with it. How long have you been watching her?

For weeks.

We blink, the cat and I. Niawen sits on the bank of the stream and unlaces her boot. Before I can breathe, her graceful ankle is exposed to the sun, and my heart lurches.

I haven’t touched her for seven years. Her ankle is not mine to caress. Her lips are not mine to coax into a passionate bow. Everything that was mine is now his.

Owein’s. What does she see in him?

She’s not yours, Kenrik growls.

This knowledge ripples madness through my core. I inch the cat forward.

A brown-haired sprite of a child races through the grass toward Niawen. She launches herself into her mother’s arms.

I close my eyes for a breath.

Your daughter, Kenrik says, his voice filled with astonishment.

I sigh. She looks so much like her mother—

Kenrik exhales with disgust. But with your hair color.

Too much of her mother is in the girl’s face, but also too much of me. Her eyes kept the color of her mother’s, but her hair is dark like mine. Her nose is petite, her lips are thin. Mine. But her laugh… her mouth tips up to the sky, and she roars as her mother does.

My heart constricts. My heart, not the beast’s that I possess. I can’t bear to watch a moment longer, but I force myself, knowing this will be the last my spiritual sight will ever drink of her ethereal visage.

Niawen will never be mine. I must tell myself this over and over.

But her daughter… she is young, impressionable, moldable.

She can still be my daughter.

What do you mean to do? Do not touch her, Caedryn, comes the voice in my head.

My real fingers curl into talons as the beast extends its claws. You, dear Kenrik, are too late.

I will start grooming my daughter to be my successor.

She is a half-emrys, as I am. A child with both the light and darkness in her heart-center, with the ability to wield both.

I will teach her to harness her darkness.

Something her mother could never do because of her light.

I beg of you, don’t touch her! Kenrik exclaims.

I will, fool. You should have never left Niawen. You as good as dug her own grave.

My sight swells with Kenrik’s own vision. He does this to infuriate me. The bond we share fuses our heart, and mind—and sometimes our sight. This only fans the hatred Kenrik and I have toward each other.

Speaking of, Kenrik reaches for his hunting knife. Vindication courses through me, from him, as he grips the blade in his hand. I feel a smirk twist his mouth even though we are worlds apart.

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