Page 103 of It Destroys Me

Three Years Later

I sat at my desk in the study, my laptop open with twenty different browser windows. I had shit to do, but my eyes kept returning to the painting on the wall, the painting I’d spotted in that gallery that felt like the story of my life.

But now, I didn’t feel as connected to it.

I would always love it because of how I got it. Because I’d married that woman and she’d made me happier than I’d been before I met her. Though now, I wondered if it was time for it to go, to make room for the new things in life.

I heard footsteps outside the closed door. Then Astrid’s voice a second later. “Killian!”

The door flew open, and a little man walked inside, wearing only a shirt with no bottoms on at all. “Dad!”

The smirk across my face was the widest it’d ever been. “Oh no.”

After he’d turned two, he started to run everywhere, and now he was too fast to catch sometimes. He beelined right for my desk.

Astrid finally caught up. “I’m so sorry. I was changing his diaper, and he just took off.”

“It’s fine,” I said with a chuckle. I came around the desk and took a knee because there was no other way for our eyes to meet. “What are you up to, little man?”

He crashed into my leg, his willy against my knee, and he hurled himself into me. “Mommy boring.”

Astrid rolled her eyes.

“Your mother is not boring.”

“Let’s play.” He grabbed my hand and started to tug.

“Killian.” Astrid came over, stunning in a summer dress, even though her eyes were dead tired. “Daddy has to work right now.”

“It’s fine.” My eyes stayed on him. “I’ll play with you. But first, where’s your diaper?”

He looked down at himself before he raised his hands like he didn’t know.

“Diaper first. Blocks second.” I threw him over my shoulder as I stood up.

He released a squeal of laughter.

Astrid looked at me. “I’m sorry. I’ll take him after we get the diaper on him.”

“Sweetheart, it’s fine.” My arm circled her waist, and I kissed her. “I want to.”

She melted at my kiss like she always did.

“Ew!” Killian said from over my shoulder. “Kissing Mommy gross.”

“Really?” I asked. “I love Mommy’s kisses. Almost as much as I love Mommy.”

Penelope has a new romantasy series coming out under the pen name Penelope Barsetti.

I was fifteen when the Death King came for us.

With a mighty black dragon and the ability to command the dead, he raised an army of our fallen soldiers to fight for him—and conquered us in the night. My father, King Laurier of Scorpion Valley, couldn’t stop him. I tried to flee but came face to face with the man in black armor, the man who looked more like a god than a human. Instead of killing me, he chose to show me mercy…but it didn’t feel like mercy.

Not when the next ten years of my life are spent as a slave in the Arid Sands, digging for Black Diamonds from sunrise to sunset. I'm also the personal slave of General Titan—a man who has grown obsessed with me. The work under the hot sun is unbearable—but I prefer it to his company any day. I’ve never tried to escape because there’s nowhere to run in the desert, but all of that changes when I hear the news—that the Death King is coming.

I sneak out in the middle of the night to steal his dragon, but that backfires in my face—because you can’t steal a dragon. Khazmuda is no mindless beast. He can speak directly into my mind and hear my thoughts in return. The Death King is about to kill me, but Khazmuda changes his mind—because I have the gift.

The ability to speak with dragons.

The Death King spares my life once again and takes me back to his castle. He has no idea who I am, has no idea what he did to my family ten years ago. He asks me to fight for his cause—but he won’t tell me exactly what that cause is. And then he tells me he wants more from me…desires me more than any other because, like him, I have the gift.

I can’t deny he’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, with eyes black like midnight, a jawline as sharp as his dragon’s talons, the height of a mountain, and shoulders as broad as a stream. But no amount of attraction will ever change the fact that he destroyed my life. The answer is no—and it’ll always be no.

But the Death King doesn’t accept that answer.

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