Page 58 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

Kaladar is a powerful dark warlock. Keeping him happy would get King what he wants, what he always seems to want. More power and control.

I try to break free, but he keeps hold of my hands with a tight grasp. “Pretty, pretty. Such a pretty little thing.”

His eyes dilate as he looks over my body once more before moving back to my face. “You know… you have your mother’s eyes.”

At the mention of my mother, I freeze. “Wha—

“She was just like you, had the same fierce independence and fiery temper.”

I grind my jaw, biting my tongue. “Oh, the innocent act will never work on me. I see your true nature and it is exquisite.”

I ignore the nausea turning my stomach and focus on the little bomb he just dropped. “How did you know my mother?”

“Oh, we go way back. Old friends she and I.”

Ice enters my veins at his words. No. He’s lying. My mother would never be friends with someone like him.

A slimy smile spreads across his face. “She didn’t tell you?”

“I doubt she would ever trust someone like you.”

His rasps a chuckle. “Just as feisty as her as well I see.”

He smiles nodding to himself. “Good. All the more fun to break you.”

He moves in close, his warm breath sliding over me. “Just. Like. Her.”

“You didn’t…” I start but stop. To say the words out loud and get an answer I didn’t want to hear made the ice expand throughout my body, turning my mind numb.

“I didn’t what?” Kaladar says raising a brow. A cruel smirk grows as he watches me.

“Let me take a guess… I didn’t… break her body until it was nothing but bits of bone?” His vicious chuckle echoes around me, the sound grating on my ears as I try to focus on one thing to pull me out of the numbness spreading over me like a heavy blanket.

“No? Then how about… I didn’t bleed her dry and use her blood for sacrifices?”

I blanch, a jolt shooting through the numbness pausing its advance. Kaladar barks out a laugh at the expression on my face.

“Unfortunately, your mother was nothing more than King’s whore. No one got close enough to her to do anything but look.”

A breath I didn’t realise I was holding, releases like a rope around my neck. That sick fuck. He was messing with me this whole time. He didn’t do any of those horrible things to her.

The numbness eases, retreating slowly.

“And what a beauty she was. I would have liked to keep her as one of my pets.”

The ice melts, sizzling as it makes way to nothing but fire and rage reminding me why I was here in the first place.

The guy’s girl. Another one of his so-calledpets.

I see red and nothing else, coming to, to finding Kaladar wiping a bloodied nose, his raspy chuckle echoing around the room. It does nothing to ease the rage still burning inside me.

I aim a punch at his throat but it’s sloppy, and he sees it coming a mile away, yanking both my hands behind my back and turning me around.

“Ah, a fighter.” Leaning in beside me, he licks his bottom lip.

“I love it when they fight and you’ll fight, won’t you, Kiarra?”

A shiver of revulsion slides down my back. I bite my tongue not giving him an answer. My emotions too heightened, too full.

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