Page 164 of Claimed In Darkness

Faster than I expected.

Faster than my body can react.

Cold steel slashes across my stomach.

My knees buckle and pain erupts through me, sharp and deep and fucking unbearable.

I choke on a gasp.

I stumble. I fall.

Blood spills across the stone, warm and wet and so fucking wrong.

I try to push myself up—but I can’t.

This wound isn’t meant to kill me quickly. It’s meant to make me suffer.

It’s meant to make me bleed out slow.

He wants to make me scream.

Zeran doesn’t just want me dead.

He wants Zephiran to find me like this.

To watch me die in his arms.

To shatter him completely.

As the world tilts, as my vision blurs, as the blood pools beneath me—there’s only one thing I think about.

This was never about me.

Zephiran, my love, has always been the target.

I have to hope to the gods that he doesn’t see me like this.

That, if he comes, he’ll see me just sleeping peacefully.

55

ZEPHIRAN

The scent of her blood reaches me first.

It stops me cold.

Thick. Coppery. Wrong.

I see her, collapsed on the stone.

A pool of red spreading beneath her.

Nairahands are shaking, lips parted in a silent gasp and her eyes are glassy.

She’s so close to death and something inside me snaps.

I don’t feelmy own legs move.

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