Page 4 of When Day Breaks

But my wife is now engineered in her vampirism withlavendulan messoremrunning in her veinsand the likeliness of me being the reason for her to escape that Hell doesn't seem very rational right now.

Regret isn't a word I know well to accept use of. I stand in the light and dark of my decisions and I prevail in all parts of my being. But this is my mistake, and I have to find a way to stop the Society from its downfall.

"I need you to come back with me, Cyn. You don't have a choice." I try to stand on firm grounds, not letting her think that she can disobey me. But if I know anything about Lucynda, it's that she doesn't not let anyone dictate her actions unless she wants to.

"How noble of you to take away my decisions now, King. What's next? Want to take my heart too?"

Lucynda shoves her hand into her own chest, plunging deep into the cages of her hollowed heart. I wince, slightly jumping at the idea that she really would take her own life. I recall the moment in her kitchen when I accidentally killed her black widow. The irony isn't lost on me that I have done the same for my own black widow; the person in front of me is no longer who she was before she met me.

I sucked all the light out of her, eager to bring out her darknesses so that I may feel satisfied in my quest for some imprudently reckless revenge. I wanted to feel better about using her, needing her to not fall greatly attached to the idea that I might actually desire her more than I let on.

I let my severe hatred for the villains in my own life control my need to act out with an end game of defending myself. Not to forget the lack of mercy given to my mother; the cruel fate that was handed to her by the one person she opted to love despite it not being returned. I took it out on the only person who seemed to have taken life and love for granted . . . Ameliana. Little did I know, I was doing the very same thing to Lucynda that her mother did to mine.

Lucynda tinkers with her own heart, not a single expression of pain on her face as she teases my fears.

Despite all that I've unknowingly done to create the villain who stands before me, I know that I didn't intend for her to get this way. I couldn't have known that the lavender curse would reach her—rarity in its bones—and while I had suspicions that her anger would boil over when I added my betrayal to the pot, how could I have known that I would feel some small semblance of remorse for the chaos I have caused and that her heart would shatter against her own hands.

"You're overreacting, Cyn." I step toward her and try my best to give her a sincere tone while still holding sternness, notably failing when her features twist with even more hate.

"Why? Because I'm broken and lost and because I am not deserving of love? How funny, seeing as you're the one who made me this way." She smiles cruelly.

"You know that's not true. I saved you Lucynda. I am not the bad guy here." I don't have time for sentiments, but I need to figure out what buttons I have to push to get her to back off of the cliff she's about to jump off of.

"That's where you're wrong.Youdid all this. Look around. This is who you are and what you wanted. And what does it matter to you, huh? You were just going to kill yourself in the end anyways. Some heroically diabolic plan you had there." She pushes me, her words ringing in my ears as she forces herself to be the bad guy. "Well, let me do it for you."

Lucynda lets go of her heart, rushes into me and throws us up against the wall. She punches a hole through my chest, all in the span of a second. Her vampirism is full-blown, and her strength aligns with my own; the perks of the blood bind we initiated and shared.

I stare into her disturbingly beautiful eyes and allow her this hissy fit she's throwing, my heart literally in her hands.

"What is your plan, little one?" I speak through gritted teeth, but somehow it comes out laced in lust more than in demand.

"Even as I play with your heart the way you've played with mine," she squeezes as she giggles quietly, her grin wicked, "you still can't control the way your body craves me, can you?"

I don't answer her, knowing that she can sense my need for her. I'll never be able to deny her even in her villain era. In fact, I might crave her even more now.

"Your whole plan for me was to follow your footsteps, breathe the air ofrevenge." She rolls her eyes as a frenzied laugh escapesher throat.. "God, I'm so fucking tired of hearing thatstupidword. But you asked for this. I'm just following the leader." Her voice demonstrates her irritation while mischief plays in her timbre as her fingers clutch my heart.

"You don't have a reason to do this, Lucynda and you know it," I argue with anger lacing my deep tone.

"Oh, and you had a reason to want to kill my mother? A reason to use me to bring her out from hiding, hoping that I would feel as much pain toward her as you did so that I would be okay with your slaughter?" There is it, her vulnerability.

"You don't understand." If only she would listen to me, let me explain. And for a minute, she did understand. She bounced off her thoughts to mimic my own when she first plunged her fist into Ameliana's heart. But that was before she knew who she was to her. She was trying to defend me, avenge me. And then, my betrayal escaped.

She clutches harder, pushing deeper. She's dangerously close to turning off the lights and all she'd have to do would be to light my body on fire and I'd be as good as gone.

"You keep saying that, but what you failed to realize is that I am theonlyone who understands!" Her fist clenches, squeezing my organ tightly in her grip. Just like when my mom was compelled to forget who I was and was forced to leave the castle without me, my life flashes before my eyes.

I feel Lucynda's pain, and it infuriates me. It's pain that I've once felt before, pain I refused to let myself feel ever again.

But I won't succumb to it. I use all the strength I have left inside me to push back against the wall, expelling us forward with so much force that the back of her head slams into the wall across the room, driving us both up against it.

Now the roles are reversed and while her hand is still buried in my chest gripping my heart with so much angst, I am subjecting her to the same fate.

We both hold on to the organs that beg for mercy, ironically beating for each other in tandem. I can feel the way her heart pumps in agony tucked into my palm as I study the look on her face, trying to brave the pain.

"We don't have to do this," I warn her through gritted teeth, pushing through my own anguish of feeling her have so much power over my life right now. "I am not your enemy, little one."

"You don't get to call me cute nicknames, Rivian. There is nothing cute about what we are."

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