Page 75 of Her Blood Revenge

Shaw andI just stare at one another. The queen’s face is an inch from mine.

Focus. I’m in control. My power. It’s my magic.

I take the tips of my fingers and press them each into my thumb as I count. Just as Shaw taught me.

He sees what I’m doing and glances around us.

One. Two. Three.

My fingernails dig in deep as I count each number. I force myself to calm. I command her in my mind to stay the fuck away from me.

Four. Five. Six.

‘You’re in control,’ he mutters, his words brimming with confidence. ‘You. Not them.’

Her hands lurch for me but meet a solid force instead of my body.

Seven. Eight. Nine.

‘Do not look at them,’ he warns.

‘Coven…’ the dead queen wheezes. ‘Your… coven and the blood… queen!’

I can’t help it. I look right at her. They’ve never spoken so coherently before. Most of the time, it’s screams and grunts of pain. The shock of hearing a spirit actually form words of meaning has me meeting her grey eyes. The smell of her burning flesh forces its way down my throat, and I struggle to breathe.

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What about it?’

‘NO!’ Shaw grips my face and tries to pull my focus away from her. ‘Don’t!’

Too late. I’ve invited her to answer. And the spirits only know one way to communicate with me.

Her cold hands grab my arm,and everything goes a painful white.

I’m her. Inside her body, feeling everything she felt. Seeing everything she saw.

The blade enters her over and over again.

It enters me.

It’s a searing pain that radiates throughout our entire being. The warmth of our blood falls to our feet and makes us slip. Her pathetic excuse of a son drives his dagger into our stomach over and over, looking us in the eye as he does with sheer contempt.

‘Is this bold enough for you, Mother?’ he snarls with a twisted smile. ‘Am I strong enough to rule now? Or am I still such a disappointment?’

I reach out, but it’s her fingers that grip his collar. ‘Yes,’ we grit back, her ruthless and stern voice leaving my mouth. ‘You are a great disappointment to us all. You will never be a worthy king.’

He withdraws his blade and slices it clear across our throat.

Although the blood that spills down our front is warm, we turn cold through our entire body.

The inevitability of death claims us, and what hurts most is not the wounds. It is the boy who delivers them so maliciously.

He watches us fall to the floor and stands over us. Over his mother.

Her heart breaks in my chest. I know her thoughts as if they’re my own. I hear them. She grew him inside her. Birthed him over twelve hours of unbearable agony. She cradled him every night and watched himtake his first steps. She loved that boy and gave him all the care she so struggled to share with anyone else.

Even when she walked in to find him cutting the legs of a cat when he was four, she loved him. She cleaned up the mess and tried to understand why he would do such a thing.

Even when she caught him tearing the wings off birds when he was six, she loved him.

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