Page 61 of Nocte

Because one day, I want to be the one to kill her with my own two hands.

It’s what I have to do.

What I was born and bred to do.

A killer is all I am, before Cassius, after Cassius.

I can never be anything else.

I can neverwantto be anything else.

And she can never make me be, not her. Not someone so weak and stupid as her.

I can’t help her fly and she can’t make me feel.

My heart is dead. I am dead.

What makes me so desperate for her?

I don’t know.

CHAPTER20

Niamh

Death hurts. It is slow to arrive, and oh… does ithurt. Not in the way I thought it would feel. Blissful and quick and eagerly accepted. I always knew I’d die anyway.

When and where didn’t matter, just that it would happen, and I would welcome it. Yes. Then I could be free to dream and be and never have to live by fae rules ever again.

How selfish a thought. How greedy.

Rules provide order. Rules… provide pain and shame and hurt and disgust. The rules that governed my life were killing me anyway, what would real death be in comparison?

Welcome. It would be so very welcome.

Not now. Oh, not now. I struggle and suffer, and everything hurts. I struggle and suffer but I refuse to give in. Not yet.

Caspian made another promise to me—and he has shown an inability to break his promises, however small. However meaningless and insignificant he finds them.

He promised me one more thing, and I can’t let it slip away.

So, I breathe and hurt. Hurt and breathe. I listen to him curse me, and growl and threaten to maim and kill.

“I’m going to kill you one day,” he tells me, his voice soft and sweet. His voice loud and angry. “I am going to be the one to kill you, so don’t you dare die.”

I won’t. He makes me resist fate itself, and I hate him for that. If only I knew it was this easy. If only I knew that strength could be found in the voice of a beautiful, broken, twisted male vamryre.

I would have sought him out myself. I would have bared my body to him sooner.

I would have given him any and everything.

But I wouldn’t ask for the mortal realm first.

I’d ask for his power. His strength. His ability to make me resist and break the bonds that have bound my life for decades.

But those are selfish thoughts.

For now, I will contend with trying not to die. Holding on. Breathing on. Gasping…

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