Page 175 of House of Lilith

But it’s just as I start walking down the hallway leading back to the Main Hall that I spot Hilde rushing over.

“Nyx,” she starts, stopping midstep and raising her eyebrows as soon as she spots me.

“Fuck off, Hilde,” I say as I try to push past her.

“Nyx, what the hell is going on?” she asks as she walks around me, blocking my way.

“What the hell is going on?” I echo bitterly. “You mean, besides perfection? I do have the perfect life, don’t I? I have more land than anyone should ever have, I have myexemplarylittle family and I’m marrying a prince, for the second time in a year no less. I’ve even got the fucking bling. What more could a girl want, right?”

For a second, she just looks at me. “I know something happened during the Fourth Game,” she says in a near whisper.

“No no,” I jump straight in, seething inside, “youwantfor something to have happened during the Fourth Game.”

I wait for her to blink at me stupidly before I get in her face and spit out, poison in my voice, “Because you’re spineless and you’re pointless and you have no life besides sticking your nose in other people’s business.”

“Wow,” she says as she swallows around a lump in her throat. Yet she looks at me like I’m being pathetic. “I think you’re in serious need of a shoulder to cry on.”

It makes me fucking snap.

I grab her by the neck and I hurl her into the wall behind her, her eyes rounding in fear when I focus on the blood rushing down the veins in her arm.

And I make said arm slam itself up into the wall next to her face, palm facing me, fingers outstretched.

Without a second of hesitation, I whip out my knife, spin it around my fingers and drive the tip into the wall between her thumb and her forefinger, making her let out a shaky breath as I feel all her muscles stiffen.

“From now on, little cousin,” I lean to whisper in her ear, “every time you address me, you risk losing a finger. How’sthatfor something to cry about?”

To my surprise, when I pull away and let her go, her hands fly to her throat, but she still has that look in her eyes that’s telling me I’m being pathetic.

I let out a scoff and I walk away, my chest heaving with even more unbearable anger.

Give, give, give, it’s all they ever want me to do. Give until I want to gouge my fucking eyes out, screaming what else is there for me to fucking give.

I have to get at least some of this out of my fucking system, I curse, otherwise I might find myself becoming the first person to actually die during a Game tomorrow.

And without me even knowing it, my feet lead me straight back to Lilith Tower, all the way up to the rookery and through the hidden door into Vasilisa’s room.

*

“Vasilisa,” I snap, still breathing heavily, as soon as I close the door behind me.

Then I just keep standing there as she walks out of the portrait, giving me a suspicious once-over before she finally frowns.

“Has something happened, girl?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation and with determination in my voice. “You love talking boy problems, don’t you?”

“No,” comes a cutting reply. “Come find me when you’re no longer hysterical.”

And she moves to walk back into the portrait.

“If you agree to hearthisparticular story,” I insist as I block her way, “you’ll get to hear all about me beingridiculouslyfucking stupid, like you wouldn’t believe.”

She squints at me for a second. “Well, when you put it like that...”

And she comes to lean on the wall next to the portrait, folding her arms, putting the sole of one boot up and frowning at me as I let myself go off the rails.

“So,” I start as I angrily pace up and down the room in front of her, “I broke up with my fiance — this was months ago — and that very same night, I started this little thing with one of the Fiains, telling myself it’d be just that. Casual sex. And for a while, itwas.”

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