Page 127 of When Night Falls

"Well, I can tellyouwon't be any fun." Her sarcasm only pisses me off further but despite her tough exterior, I recognize it as fraud. I can tell she is worried about her presence here, regretting ever having come.

"Do tell, what held you to the confines of Valor Cove, Ameliana? Why not brave face when Renard died? Or sooner for that matter?" I pace the ground in front of her.

Shadows dance across the gray rock walls, flashing in little ambient specks as the candlelight sways in the small breeze that bounces around the room.

I remember just how cold it got down here, especially in the winters. I'd come out with blue toes and frozen lips. And I wasn't even granted a warm bath. But Natasha tried. I just hated seeing her get hurt for offering her well-being to try and save me.

"You didn't answer my question," Ameliana responds, clearly not wanting to entertain my interrogation.

"No need to be so puerile." I quip, hating how she thinks she's going to get out of this without an explanation or otherwise . . . alive.

Finally, she yanks again on the chains, coming up short with the strength required to pull them free from her limbs. I smile, knowing she must hate being trapped but she will know my pain. My fortress is impenetrable. She’s stuck until I saw otherwise.

"I had my reasons." Her answer is a cop out of sorts, she thinks she's going to give me the bare minimum but I will force every last poor excuse out of her if it's the last thing I do.

I continue pacing back and forth, making her sweat while she processes what I could possibly want with her. I know she can't be so oblivious to the pain I endured. To the series of events she unraveled upon her arrival.

“Let me go, Rivian. We can talk about this.”

I scoff.

"Did you know that when you accepted my father’s offer of marriage, you forced my mother to be thrown out on the streets with no recollection of who I am to her?" I feel my veins burn with irritation. How can someone be so cruel, ignorant to the trauma left in her wake.

"You know more than anyone that I had no choice in the matter, Rivian."

I don’t give her the satisfaction of a response. I savor the feeling that overcomes me as she struggles against the holds keeping her in place.

"So that's what this is? You're mad at me because your mom didn't get to see you grow up into this hateful man?" Her words shouldn’t hurt. I have put up with so much that I have become numb to it all, but speaking ill of an innocent woman strikes hatred in me, especially if that woman is my mother.

"My mother actually loved that horrid man, you resented him. Yet how is it fair that you were the one who got to stay?" The words falling from my lips, more so for me as I recount just one of the reasons why I am plagued with this need to make Ameliana pay.

"It's not my fault your father chose me over Valaria, Rivian. You said it yourself; the man was horrible." She tries to place guilt onto someone who already lost his life to the karma that he deserved. But it’s not enough.

"Do you hear yourself? It isexactlyyour fault."

"You're being childish."

I grab the nearest Tiki torch, blow out the flame, break the stick in half, then fiercely toss the piece of wood straight into Ameliana's chest from ten feet back, all within a split second, purposefully missing her heart. I don't want to kill her just yet. I only want to hurt her a little first. Make her suffer just as I did.

She groans as the splintered stick penetrates her skin, the chains rattle as she bends over in agony.

"You know the very chains that capture your wrists were the same that held me down while my father whipped me. And the same chair you are confined to is the same chair I sat in while I was starved for days.” I lean down to match her level, still a few feet back, as she groans for me to get the stick out of her chest.

I was told I needed to beman enoughif I was ever going to take place as king one day. Because half-bloods are weak and he believed I was never going to be good enough. He was more worried about the disgrace of his name than the well-being of his own flesh and blood.

I'm sure if my father was allowed to let Travois take reign, he would have but the law states that the first-born male must rule. Apparently, I wasn't strong enough because my mother never got the chance to perform thesanguis religoafter marriage. To this day, I’ll never know why but it left me labeled as aflawedhalf-blood, claiming my blood was defective because of it.

I walk up to the chair, seeing her flinch just a little at my arrival and I reach down so that my chilling whisper can be heard rattling her bones. "Then there was you." I grab the stick and drive it in further, hearing the splices of her organs twisting against the jagged edges as blood starts seeping from her chest. "Forcing me to live through the ridicule of a weak man because you weresospecial that you took the only comfort I knew away from me. It was torture being chained up the way you so gracefully demonstrate now."

"You're deranged." Ameliana spits at my feet, her body still bent over the makeshift dagger that's buried in the middle of her chest.

"What an observation. Care to make another one?" I glide the stake a little closer to her left, entering her heart and letting the threat of fire engulf her, worry strains on her face.

"Fuck you. I have nothing to do with this little tiff you claim I have caused. Your dad followed the lore. Just likeyouapparently did."

She’s not wrong. But it doesn’t make it right. I can’t imagine a scenario that she might make up where her actions were justified.

She allowed it to go on.

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