Page 125 of A War of Crowns

She tried to kill you first, he reminded himself yet again while she thrashed beneath him.She sent a blade for you in the night.

Shifting his weight, Aldric straddled the queen’s waist and pressed his right hand against her mouth all the more tightly. His left wrapped around the witchblade’s hilt at last.

He had to do it. He couldn’t stop now. He’d be caught. He’d be killed.

And his Sons would be executed soon after.

Steeling his soul, hardening his heart, Aldric pulled the wrapped witchblade free. But before he could strike, he bit back a roar of pain as hiskireiabruptly drove something sharp down into the meat of his left thigh.

Fire coursed through his leg, bringing with it a great agony. The witchblade tumbled harmlessly from his fingers and thumped to the floor. He stared down at the dagger now protruding from his thigh.

She had stabbed him.

Chapter thirty-five

Seraphina

She had stabbed him—the Crow.

The murderer. The monster. Her fiancé.

The man who haunted her dreams every night. The man currently straddling her waist.

Shehad stabbedhim.

Ever since the summit, ever since having first laid eyes on the Crow, Seraphina had slept with her bodice dagger tucked beneath her pillow. She had just never imagined she would have to actually use it.

But now here he was, on top of her, bearing down upon her form with all of his weight. Was this what the vision had been trying to tell her? Had the Lord been trying to warn her she needed to bind the Crow? Keep himlocked away?

It was too late now.

He shouldn’t have been that heavy. He was so much shorter than she. Logic dictated sheshouldhave been able to easily shove him off of her.

But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t break free.

His callused hand covered her mouth and nose. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t call for help. She choked on the scent of his sweat and the metallic tang of blood as he slowly smothered her.

Pure panic sent her blood pounding in her ears as she thrashed beneath him, working with all of her strength to buck him off. But again, she failed.

The man was like a leech, refusing to budge.

Instead, he clamped his hand all the more tightly over her mouth while hissing a low, “Be silent,” into her ear.

Be silent?

She might have laughed at the hilarity of a man currently trying tokillher ordering her to be silent, were she not on the verge of passing out from a lack of air.

I’m going to die, she realized through the haze of her breathlessness.

She was going to leave Elmoria without a queen. Without a king. Without so much as an heir.

But just as the world faded at the edges, an animalistic shriek shattered the muted quality of the moment. A blur of scales and wings shot past her swiftly darkening vision to tangle itself with the shadowed silhouette of the man looming over her.

Alyx.

Her usuru wasn’t supposed to be there that night. She had been staying in the Roost with the rest of her kind. But Seraphina hadn’t wanted to sleep alone, not after the Crow’s earlier taunting about her love of Sovereign had drawn forth painful memories of her mother.

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