Page 44 of Fated In Forever
And when that last beat came?—
I would be gone.
Not dead. Not really.
Orcus.
A god born from ruin and death, carved from ancient magic and even more ancient cruelty. And Malachi Draven, the boy who once loved the stars and the mortal man who believed in loyalty to his friends, would vanish into myth.
I had fought this ending every step of the way and I had failed.
Even worse, I had failedher.
Evangeline was perfectly still, that knife point poised at her throat, her power coiled tightly in her body, waiting. Ready to fight for me. For us, her eyes finding mine over and over again. But Ravok would not risk another failure. He would not allow himself to be tricked a second time.
No, he would rather slit her throat than lose, and that was what terrified me most.
Vicious didn’t flinch. Her face held no fear, only fire. Her hand was buried deep inside the pocket that held The Book, the last secrets of my dying life. She had trusted me with everything, followed me down here on the promise of a lie, and now…
For a second time, I could not save her.
I wish everything would have been different.Her eyes flared slightly, Ravok going off again about how he was going to use us to forge his unholy kingdom, as if I gave a fuck about his plans.
I wish I had thrown ambition aside and come and found you, long before I did. That I had courted you, the way you deserved to be courted. That I told you every truth in my heart, then made love to you beneath the stars, without any ugliness or secrets between us.
You don’t get to say those words to me.
You don’t get to make pretty promises you can’t keep.
Nonetheless, I would have worshipped you like a queen, pleading on my knees for your first kiss, and all the ones that came after. That is my wish, which I know is foolish, and comes far too late.I paused, pondering the wisdom of my next words.
But I was too in love to think with anything but my heart, and I thought we would have forever.
Her eyes filled with tears and I knew…I should have told her sooner. But the words had always felt too heavy, too final. Saying them out loud would make them real. And I had been so, so afraid of losing what little we still had.
But here I was, losing her anyway.
Somewhere outside of us, Ravok droned on, but I was too lost inside her fierce, lethal glare, the viciousness dancing in her tear-stained eyes to notice.
So this is my vow. I will get you out of this room alive. I will hold Ravok back, long enough for you to get into the outer passageways. Once you do, promise me this. I need you to run, Evie. Run as fast and as hard as you can. And once you find Blake, or Riordan or Finn, you let them take you away from here.
As if I’d run away from this. As if I’d leave you.
I would have growled, if I had control over my body, which I didn’t.
And that was when I realized the only sound in the chamber was the dull roar from the portal. Ravok had gone silent, his gaze flicking between us. “Did you hear what I said? How things are going to be? I own you both. You aremine.”
“You don’t own anything, you fucker.” Her voice was raspy, her gaze finding mine, locking as Ravok’s hand dropped an inch, the point of the knife dragging along herthroat, leaving behind a deep scratch that had rage swallowing me up.
“I’ve told you this before, but apparently your brain is rotted and you need reminding.” She went on, never breaking our stare. “You will lose. You are just an old, twisted up vampire who has lived too long. You are not powerful or even especially clever, just selfish and deluded by your own inflated ego. And soon, when this is over, I promise you this. Nobody will even remember your name.”
Vicious…
I saw—in stark detail—how the fine muscles of Ravok’s forearm tensed, how his fingers tightened around the hilt of the silver athame. All those centuries spent as a soldier, when my very survival had relied on the shift of an eye, the slightest change in stance, I knew exactly what this fuck was about to do.
He was going to kill my beautiful, vicious girl.
He was going to take her away from me. Steal everything that made her the most unique creature this world had ever seen, and he was going to kill her because he was petty and jealous and greedy.
