Page 37 of Dark Prince's Mate

The sound of that makes me lose all reason.“She would’ve died.”My voice grows in volume until the whole palace must be able to hear me.“If the Phaelix hadn’t taken her, Elsie would’ve been dead.”

Dead.

My vision goes hazy.Red bleeds into the edges.The injustice wakes a rage in me that knows no boundaries.My reason fails as a deep, dark void sucks me in.I’m aware of nothing but the power vibrating inside me, the darkness that’s slowly creeping in and swallowing the light until the darkness becomes the light.

“Aruan!”

My mother’s terrified scream reaches me through the power that’s taken over my body and mind.

“Aruan.”Someone shakes me.“Stop it!”My father.

“Aruan!”

I blink through the wave of haziness, slowly coming to my senses.The light is blinding.It streams through the windows, hurting my eyes and burning my skin.

The sun.

Through the arched windows, the flaming ball in the sky is a flaring mass of white light that steals the colors in the room.The beams bask everything in that pale, brilliant heat.

“Aruan.”My father grips my arm hard.“Calm down.”

It takes effort to do so.I will down the rage, getting a handle on it with difficulty.

Slowly, the sun shrinks to the size of a nut in the sky.The suffocating heat goes back to the humid hotness of a normal day.Colors return to the room.The landscape that’s visible through the window is no longer a white portrait with stark lines of flashing black but simply the green grass of the rolling hill and the blue of a cloudless sky.Although, a few of the taller trees in the distance are black, as if they’ve been scorched by fire.

I register the people in the room.Suno is shivering, staring at me with round eyes.Tarix, who found shelter behind a sofa, is straightening on wobbly legs.A trickle of sweat runs down his temple, but he doesn’t wipe it away.He clenches the back of the sofa in a white-knuckled grip, looking at me as if I’m a monster.Vitai leans against a wall, appearing equally stunned and impressed.My father has an arm around my mother’s waist, holding her steady.

My mother finds her voice first.“If anything could prove my point, that was it.”

“Nia,” my father says in a tone I’ve never heard him use with her before.

I ball my hands into fists.“You harmed Elsie.You nearly killed her.”

“She’s here now,” Vitai says.“That’s what you have to focus on.”

His words only aggravate me anew.

Vitai adds quicky, “And that she’s perfectly healthy and not dying any longer.”

“How is that possible?”my father asks Vitai.“Could Elsie’s body have been restored to its original health when it was brought back through the portal to Zerra?Is that why her power reappeared?”

Vitai smoothes down his hair.“It’s a plausible explanation.Aruan told me about Elsie’s condition on Earth a while ago, and I’ve looked at it from all angles since, but I still haven’t come up with a theory.”

“It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” my mother says.“Going back through the portal somehow undid?—”

“Is that why you tried to poison her?”I interject with a resentful smile.“Because fate ironically put a spike in your plan?So you thought you’d better finish her off for good this time?”

My mother gasps.“I would never!Besides, do you think I’d poison myself?”

The bitter disappointment makes me cruel.“You’ve proved yourself shrewd enough.I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“That’s enough,” my father snaps.

“I didn’t try to poison anyone.”My mother adopts a wounded look.“I swear that on the lives of my children.”

I cross my arms.“Then who did it?”

My mother blows out a frustrated sigh.“I wish I knew.”

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