Page 50 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

I was fucking murderous.

THIRTY-ONE

ESTRELLA

I turned my attention to the obelisk that held Khaos, watching him loose a subtle sigh. His lips tipped up too much to be a smirk, but he suppressed it before it could become a full-blown smile, glancing over his shoulder at the Primordials watching him carefully.

I hated that smile and everything it embodied. I hated the notion that it was a moment of pride for him. Yes, I’d won.

But at what cost? What weight would that vision have on my future, haunting me through my years with my mate?

From where I sat on my podium, I shifted my stare back to Melinoe’s seething face. She bared her teeth, malice churning behind her gaze. I couldn’t even fault her, not when the catlike beast paced below us and waited for a meal.

She tipped her mouth up into a devious grin as I laid back down. She might think that she could break me, but she wouldn’t. I’d been created of flesh and bone, forged in the fires of abuse and tyrants.

Gold glittered above my head, falling down to land on my faceand drag me into the deep sleep where Melinoe ruled. She controlled my dreams and nightmares, holding the power in her hands to give me the greatest dreams or the worst memories.

I dragged back a deep breath, my body feeling ragged and torn in the wake of my traumatic experience. Losing Caldris had nearly broken me, and only the knowledge that he still lived in Mab’s clutches kept me going as sleep dragged me under.

I held Khaos in my mind, the gleaming gold of his stare following me from behind closed lids.

I was the daughter of Khaos.

So chaos was what I would embrace.

The cane came down against my mother’s shoulders, sending her flying forward. She fell from the chair, landing on the rough wood of the floor. The smack of her palms against the surface was audible, echoing through the Temple where I’d spent so many days learning to kneel obediently.

My mother’s arms shook as she tried to push herself up to sit, her body jolting with the force of the cane when Lord Byron struck it down across her back once again. His gleaming, malicious blue eyes held mine as he beat my mother, and I strode forward to snap that cane from his hand and shove it into his belly.

I’d been deprived of his death the first time; I wouldn’t lose it this time.

My mother looked up, her tear-filled brown eyes meeting mine in the mirror at the front of the room. The Priestesses used it to force us to see our own flaws, to gaze upon them as our husband would one day.

In it, I saw my mother’s sheer exhaustion.

I hurried forward, smacking into an invisible barrier that kept me from reaching her. I slapped a palm against it, feeling for any breaks in the magic that had no home in this place. Mistfell condemned magic. The Priestesses and Lord Byron condemned it.

“All those you love suffer. All those you lovedie,” the High Priestess said, her voice a gentle whisper in my ear. I spun to look for her, finding nothing and no one behind me. My mother and Lord Byron existed just beyond that magical boundary, leaving me to consider if this had been how Caldris felt when he knew I was going to die and the Veil stood in his way of reaching me.

He brought the cane down on the small of her back, leaving her body tojolt as I fought for a way to reach her. My fists banged on the glass between us, pressing as if I could push through. Byron merely smirked at me in the reflection of the mirror, forcing me to meet his gaze.

“You’ll never be enough,” the High Priestess said, forcing my stare to turn to myself.

How many years had I spent staring into my own reflection in this mirror and finding myself lacking? How many years had I looked upon myself and believed the hatred in her words?

I’d never be enough. I’d never begoodenough for this realm.

Because I hadn’t belonged here.

The sunlight reflected off the mirror, making my head tip to the side as I tried to hold my own stare. Something danced beneath the surface in my eyes, a glimmer of golden light shimmering behind my irises. Glancing down to the fingers tipped in darkness and the starry sky, I raised them to look at them in front of me.

When I lifted my stare to that mirror once again, my eyes had delved into the dark, starry-eyed stare Caldris had seen that day at Blackwater. The creature that existed within me, allowed to escape and take ownership of my body.

I didn’t know what she was or who she would make me become, only that I’d never felt stronger than those moments when she rode my body and we had to fight to pull me back.

She was not helpless or afraid.

She wasenough.

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