Page 116 of Claimed In Darkness

And she lets me have this.

She lets me keep this fucking illusion that I can still hold onto her.

She’s aware that I am too much of a coward to face the truth.

She’s aware I will not admit that I already feel her slipping.

She knows I will not accept that I am the one who made her this way.

And she lets me believe the lie.

This is the only thing we have left now.

Not love.

Not trust.

Not a future.

Only this.

This quiet, slow unraveling.

This war we are both pretending we can still win.

We lost the moment I put that relic in her hands.

And the monster I made is still hungry.

And when she decides to take what she is owed?—

Will she even spare me?

Or will she devour me whole?

And the hard, real truth is I’m going to let her.

39

NAIRA

They come at dawn.

The sky is still dark, the horizon bleeding a deep, bruised purple, the air thick with the last remnants of night.

I hear them before I see them.

The slow, measured thud of armored boots against damp earth.

The creak of leather, the shifting weight of weapons, the barely restrained tension of men who think they have already won.

They think we don’t know.

Think we can’t feel them moving in the shadows, circling, waiting.

Idiots.

By the time the first of them steps into the clearing—I already have a blade in my hand.

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