Page 118 of Forever Touched

She waved her hand dismissively. “An eye for an eye, Adalyn. He took my husband’s life, so I took his. In all the chaos, it wasn’t hard to catch him unaware. You arrived shortly after that, and I took advantage of a perfect opportunity. One could even call whathappened fate.”

At how cavalier she sounded, anger heated my blood. Balling my hands into fists, I inhaled a few calming breaths before replying, “When I found out that you killed him, I wanted to kill you with my own two hands. All I could think about was how amazing it would feel to destroy your life as you had destroyed mine. But I don’t want to be like you, Deloris. I don’t want to be consumed by hatred and vengeance.”

Shock contorted her features, and she snapped, “Howdareyou call me anything but Mistress, you littlebrat. Howdareyou betray me like this, after all I’ve done for you.”

“All you’vedonefor me?” I roared, so loudly that all three of them flinched. “All you’ve done is use and abuse me. You treated me like trash and threw me away when you no longer needed me. I was achild, and you stole my innocence. You turned me into aweapon. You manipulated me into thinking the Venturi were the enemy, when the only one I should have been focused on wasyou.”

“Me?I’mthe victim here, Adalyn, not you!” she shrieked, taking a step toward me. “I’ve beenstucklike this for decades, living in perpetual darkness while the Venturi are allowed to walk in the sunlight without consequence. It’s notfair. This wasn’t the life I was promised. Richard said we would live happily ever after. He said we wouldthrive, that the world would be ours. But he was wrong. We’ve beenmiserableas vampires. I shouldn’t have let him turn us, and I hate him for leaving us to face this awful existencealone.”

“Mother,” Georgina gasped, staring at her mother in shock.

“Shut up, Georgina!” Deloris barked, her eyes flashing red as she whirled on her eldest daughter. “You and your sister have beenuseless. You’ve done nothing to improve our status, and I’m sick to death of yourwhining.”

Georgina’s chin began to quiver. She stared at her seething mother, then suddenly lunged at her with a feral scream. The two females violently clashed, knocking Octavia down as they slapped and clawed at each other. They tore each other’s dresses to shreds, yanking and ripping out hair until I could see their bloody scalps. As they screamed at each other, Octavia sat on the floor and whimpered like a kicked puppy.

“Enough!” a male voice thundered, instantly shutting the Faircrofts up. Still gripping handfuls of each other’s hair, Deloris and Georgina froze as Everett came to stand beside me and commanded, “Cease this madness immediately. This is no way to behave in front of your future king and queen.”

Their faces paled.

“Queen? What queen?” Octavia questioned, looking bewildered. “We’ve never had a queen before.”

“It’s her,” Georgina whispered, staring at me in horror. “It’s alwaysher. Mother, do something. Enforce the pactum.Killher. You can’t let the troll become our queen. Mother?Mother!”

Ignoring Georgina’s hysteria, I locked eyes with my ex-mistress and said, “Haven’t you heard? The little witch you trapped has become a vampire.” Lifting my hand, I willed my new black claws to emerge. “Well, not justanyvampire. A vampire witch hybrid.” Cerulean blue magic danced on the tips of my claws like candle flames. “Since I’m basically a Venturi now, I doubt there will be many complaints when I’m crowned queen.”

Her expression morphed from shock, to disbelief, to blindingrage.

She didn’t hide it. She openly let me see her hatred, and I didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

“Impossible,” she spat, violently trembling from head to toe. “You’re just an orphan. An indentured servant. A blood whore. You’re nothing.Nothing!”

“Kade, arrest Madame Faircroft for treason,” I quietly ordered, finally allowing myself a small smile.

“Gladly,” Kade replied and stepped forward.

Madame Faircroft’s eyes practically bugged out of her head.

“Enjoy your last few moments of freedom,Mistress,” I said. “Treason against the crown is a lifelong sentence in a high-security SCA holding cell.”

As Kade approached her, she froze like a terrified rabbit about to be eaten. In the next second, she bolted. Not toward us but away. So fast that no one reacted in time. Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw herself at the curtained window and crashed through. Georgina and Octavia screamed as their mother disappeared over the edge, as the evening sun sliced through the broken window and hit their exposed skin.

In a flash, I dragged them out of harm’s way, then raced to the window—just in time to see Madame Faircroft hit the ground and burst into flames. A wail rose up from the fiery inferno of flesh, but it didn’t last long. Within seconds, she was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash.

I waited for the guilt to hit, but it never came.

She’d chosen her fate, just like I’d chosen mine. I’d finished what I came to do, and I could move on now. Could finallylive.

Pepper was still valiantly clinging to my shoulder as I turned and headed back across the room. Everett opened his arms to me, and I stepped into them with a relieved sigh.

While Loch and Kade secured the Faircroft sisters with cuffs specially designed for vampires, Georgina threw me a scathing glare, her tear-stained face streaked with mascara. “This is allyourfault.”

“Yes, it is,” I replied. “I saved you from sharing the same fate as your selfish mother who didn’t think twice about abandoning you. You’re welcome.”

She scrunched her face up in an ugly grimace before looking away.

Octavia stared at me rather solemnly, then quietly asked, “Will they starve us?”

Shockingly, I felt a pang of sympathy for her then. “No, I’ll make sure the SCA doesn’t starve you,” I told her. “And with a lot of hard work and good behavior, you might even earn yourself a few privileges.”

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