Page 7 of Ruined Kingdom

“That’s right. You were lured here like a moth to a flame. Now, you will be feasted upon—as has been your purpose all along.” He pulled my face back to him and smiled a horrible smile. A dreadfully hungry smile.

Feasted upon?

2

SOPHIA

Fear ate away at all the other thoughts racing through my mind.

I needed to find a way to escape, but instead, all I could seem to focus on was the terrible face before me.

I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the obsidian eyes that harbored everything that had ever frightened me in my life. It was like he knew them all somehow.

Helene… Kaine… Berrok… Anyone?

The Fae King’s jaw detached with a gnarly pop as his maw stretched open more and more until a black abyss formed there. It was such absolute dark emptiness that it seemed to suck the little light that was left around me into its oblivion, never to escape again.

Crippling fear swelled up inside of me. There was nothing I could do to stop this creature.

He took a deep breath, or more like sucked in all the air within our vicinity, and with it, a force of light energy started to shine outward from the center of my chest. There was no other way to describe it. It was otherwise incomprehensible.

Though what became abundantly clear was that the more he sucked, the more the feeling of fatigue and sleepiness overcame me—whereas he only seemed to be growing stronger. With every passing second, his hunched form straightened.

Even the choking miasma of hateful darkness that’d normally surrounded him came back with a vengeance. The power even seemed to fill and illuminate his black eyes.

I found I didn't have the strength to witness it any longer. My eyes fell shut as I prayed for it all to be over soon.

Helene, didn’t you send me back for a reason? I can't die here… Kaine!

Just when I thought I was about to fall into a never-ending pit of nothingness, the sucking stopped and the putrid hand released my face. “Take her away. I'm finished with her.”

I opened my eyes just in time to see the Fae King turn around and disappear into the darkness once more.

He still had something of a limp to his stride, though, meaning he was likely not fully healed… Not yet… But would be soon enough. I also knew he’d be back to finish us all off when that time came.

The guards began dragging me away as my bare feet attempted to dig into the soft earth as if that was going to stop them from taking me wherever they planned to either kill or lock me up as a later snack for the Fae King.

I fought and thrashed against their hold as hard as I could, but with my waning strength, I was next to useless. “No… No.”

I don't want to be a victim anymore. I don't want to be the kind of person that always needs rescuing. I need to rescue myself. I need to prove that I'm the kind of woman that deserves to be by Kaine's side.

A blunt object knocked against my jaw, sending searing pain through the side of my face. “The sooner you stop fighting, the easier this will get.”

I realized that one of the guards hit me in the face with the back end of their spear. This made me angry—perhaps unreasonably so, but still, it was the fuel I needed to bring myself out of my weakened state.

I focused on channeling as much strength into my arms as I could, and gritted my teeth as I fought against their bone-crushing grip on me. “I said, no!”

The next thing I knew, the guard to my left started to scream out in pain. Confused, my eyes flew to him.

Not only was he hissing and heaving, snarling, and looking at me in terror, I noticed the sound, scent, and sight of his flesh searing as if he’d just been burned as well. He’d released me without putting up a fight.

The guard on my other side, however, was looking between his companion and me in bewilderment, trying as much as all of us to figure out what had just happened.

My gaze then fell to my left arm and I watched in dumbstruck awe as it glowed from within. It was as if a light was shining from beneath my skin there.

I dazedly stared at my forearm, my eyes wide with shock and disbelief as they followed the luminescent pathway running all the way down to my fingertips—where the light was simply too bright to look at directly.

I myself had barely realized what was happening to me when I turned to the side, and pressed my light-emitting hand to the face of the remaining guard.

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