Page 80 of Monster's Pretty Bride

Eryss goes still beside me, her hands curling into fists. Her lips part as if she’s about to speak but no words come out.

Catalina holds her gaze, unflinching. “You have to kill him.”

Eryss flinches. As if the words physically cut her.

Slowly, my eyes slide to her. My beautiful, conflicted, dangerous little bride.

So it’s come to this.

It was always going to come to this.

I smirk. “Is that all?”

Eryss looks up at me, and there’s something shattered in her expression, something raw.

She doesn’t say a word.

We both know the truth.

She doesn’t want to kill me anymore.

Yet if she doesn’t, she’ll never be free.

I chuckle, the sound bitter, empty, hollow. I turn on my heel and stride away before she can see what’s cracking inside me. Before she can see the fractures running through my chest, through my mind, through my very soul.

I don’t go far.

Just enough to be out of sight.

Just enough to clutch my chest and feel the way my body splinters from the inside out.

My time is already running out.

Magic flickers along my skin, the fractures in my body pulsing with an unholy glow. Every day, the corruption spreads, tightening its grip on my bones, my blood, my very essence.

This is inevitable.

I’ll die.

Either by the curse eating me from within.

Or by her hand.

And if I must die… then let it be by her.

Let it be the one thing I give her, the one thing I offer without taking anything in return.

Let my death give her what she needs.

Let it give her power. Let it make her free.

I’d rather she kill me with her own hands than let another take her away from me.

I exhale, closing my eyes.

Damn it all.

I never wanted to care. Never wanted to feel this, this consuming need to exist in her presence, to breathe her, to fight for her.

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