Page 76 of A Bond in Blood

But I wasn’t sure the being before me was the king I loathed.

His hands moved like he was painting something in the wind. My eyes went to his limbs, noticing the skin turning grey. Almost translucent with his bones becoming visible beneath.

The red of the moon made him all the more horrible. Layering red over the shadows and his body. Painting the Unseelie King as though he were dripping in blood.

I continued my backward retreat, cursing the high hills blocking this place of solitude from the rest of the city. Trapping me with the monster I’d awoken.

“Fear,” Ulrich laughed. “It always smells the best right before death. When the soul is most alive. Fighting to stay attached to the body it lives within.”

My heart dropped.

“Please,” I whispered

His head threw back and I blinked in shock as his mask clattered at his feet. When I brought my gaze up, I found his shadows had replaced it, whipping around his features. A living, dark force blocking everything but his eyes. His laugh was just as low and dangerous as his voice, a warning to run.

But I couldn’t. I was frozen in fear, trembling in the sand with my dress dripping around my feet.

“I rarely hear the begging.” He continued his approach. “Rarely take the moment to allow that fear to build before I consume my victim. A shame when the most fearful are the most delicious.”

His shadows bit at my ankles, dancing around the lower half of my body as he stalked closer.

His hand, greyed and almost decayed in appearance, gripped my face. “You’ve broken your deal, Brenna,” he sneered.

“No!” I protested.

His shadows encompassed his body, turning him to a being of black. Licking up his arms, replacing his limb with the darkness.

“Youran. Attempted escape.”

I shook against his hold, my tears falling onto the shadows. “No, I wasn’t running. I wasn’t.”

“You are not obeying your rules,Ursa. Broken deals must be claimed.”

He leaned forward and my body jolted. Pain swirled in my mind and throughout my entire being.

“I’m obeying!” I protested. “I just needed to be clean!”

He leaned closer and my mouth opened without my control. I couldn’t understand what was happening. Why my body convulsed. Why suddenly, the pain was retreating and something else, something frigid, cold and horrible, was taking over.

“Your soul was marked before you took your first breath,Ursa.”

The words branded me, coiling around me, tightening over my heart. I couldn’t find the strength to refute them. To deny his claim.

Because what if he wasn’t wrong?

Then I was flying into the sand hill behind me, my head hit it with force. My vision blurred and I watched as Olen ran across the sand, and attacked Ulrich, tackling him to the ground.

The king’s shadows wrapped around the two men, blocking me from seeing what occurred. I could hear it, though. The bellows of rage. The shouts.

And, alarmingly, two different animalistic snarls.

“Ulrich!” Olen’s voice shouted. “Ulrich return!”

Ulrich’s shadows climbed higher, a dome of black blocking the fight he was tangled in.

“Don’t allow it to take control!” Olen yelled louder. “Don’t letherwin.”

Her?

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