Page 136 of This Monster of Mine

Walking to where Sarai fruitlessly struggled, he traced a line down her jaw. “Gods only know what Kadra sees in this. Has he had you yet?”

She spat in his face.

His eyes turned ugly. “So be it.”

He fastened a hand around her throat. Terror emptied her mind, the scent of her burning flesh tunneling up her nostrils as her bonds scorched deeper. She twisted from side to side, searching for a weapon, for anything—

“Don’t you dare!”

Tullus’s weight vanished as Cisuré grappled him to the ground. Gripping her hair, he slammed her face-first into the ground. Bone cracked, and she wailed, clutching her nose.

Sarai recoiled as Tullus turned to her.

As he approached, she used the only weapon she had left. She dropped the illusion.

One second. Two. The scars winding across her face were reflected in Tullus’s dark pupils. He tottered back. The fiery ropes holding her vanished for the briefest of seconds.

And Sarai sprung into action.

Shoving the agony of her wounds to one corner of her mind, she sidestepped him to pick up Cisuré’s dagger, and immediately sliced through his left hamstring from her crouched vantage point. He crumpled with a scream. Stretching out a hand, he ground his teeth, attempting the fiery ropes once more.

“Like hell you will,” she spat.

Matching her palm to his, it took her less than a second to reach beneath his skin, to tunnel into the intricate mass of capillaries beneath. And to shred every one of them.

Tullus screamed as Sarai did the same to his other hand.

Panting, she forced the magic through her exhausted limbs.Just a little farther.

Hands locked around her shoulders, dragging her from Tullus to shove her across the room. Sarai couldn’t halt a scream when Cisuré purposefully slammed a heel into her injured ankles.

“You can’t leave.” Blood dripped from Cisuré’s broken nose. “Hate me if you must, but this is for your own good.”

Footsteps sounded hard and fast up the staircase, a familiar roar of rage vibrating through the ballroom. Cisuré shoved Sarai’s face into a curtain, suffocating her with the fabric. She flailed wildly, vision going multicolored and hazy. Elbowing her face, she grappled with Cisuré, colliding with a door.

It burst open, throwing them onto the balcony. She barely had time to register the horribly familiar view before Cisuré gripped her head.

“I’m keeping you safe,” she pronounced. And slammed Sarai’s skull into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sarai opened her eyes to agony. Hers. And someone else’s. The blood on her hands hadn’t begun to dry. She’d only been unconscious for minutes.

A tormented scream cut through her stupor, and she turned her neck to see Kadra, blade aloft, the very picture of one of the Wretched from legend. Her eyes followed the arc of his sword as he sliced through Tullus’s wrist, cleaving it straight off to join his other severed hand.

A weak sound of shock left her, but he didn’t seem to hear it.

“I think I’ll make you a torso,” he said hoarsely.

He was completely undone. Eyes incandescent, he brought the point down and through Tullus’s kneecap. Cisuré whimpered, curled up against a wall as Kadra gripped the Tetrarch’s remaining limb and did the same.

He placed a boot over the now-limbless Tetrarch’s mouth. “You should never have touched her.” His voice was hoarse. “She wasmine, and you—”

Rearing back, he plunged his blade into Tullus’s chest with a sickening crack that made Sarai flinch in shock. Leaving it in to prolong Tullus’s suffering, he leveled malevolent eyes on Cisuré, just as footsteps came up the staircase for the third time that night.

But this time, it wasn’t just one person. Aelius and his vigiles stormed the room, half of them freezing at the tableau before them.

“Tetrarch Aelius!” Cisuré sobbed, rushing to cling to his ivory robes. “Oh gods, he’s killed Tetrarch Tullus!”

---