Page 16 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons
The sound of the steel clattering on the earth was like a slap. The rage receded, leaving a cold, sickening void in its wake. Around us, every sparring match had stopped, instructors and students alike staring at the tableau we'd created.
Valeria was on the ground, blood streaming from multiple cuts, her expensive training leathers torn and muddy. She looked up at me with naked hatred, her chest heaving with pain and humiliation.
"You mad bitch," she gasped. "You tried to kill me."
I looked down at her, taking in her bloodied face and torn clothes, and felt nothing but cold satisfaction. "Maybe I should have finished the job."
Then my eyes found Jalend. He was pale, his own practice sword hanging forgotten in his hand. But it wasn’t disgust on his face. It was horror, and something else—a dawning, terrible understanding. He was finally seeing me. Not the woman he’d shared wine with, but the killer forged in the arena. The monster.
“Get out,” Cassius ordered, his voice dangerously quiet. “Get out of my yard before I have you thrown in the brig.”
I went.
6
Ibarely made it ten steps from the training yard before his hand closed around my arm like a vice.
"Don't." Jalend's voice was low, dangerous, carrying a fury I'd never heard from him before. "Don't you dare walk away from me."
I turned to face him, and the raw anger in his dark eyes made my breath catch. Gone was the gentle, thoughtful man I'd fallen in love with. In his place stood someone I barely recognized—someone whose pain had transformed into something sharp and deadly.
"Let go of me," I said quietly, though I made no move to pull away. Part of me wanted this confrontation, needed it. The past weeks of his cold silence had been a special kind of torture, and even his fury was preferable to indifference.
"No." His grip tightened, and he began dragging me toward the main building. "We're going to talk. Now."
I could have broken free—my gladiator training had taught me a dozen ways to escape a hold like this. But I let him pull me along, through corridors filled with curious stares andwhispered conversations. By tomorrow, the entire Academy would know that Jalend Northreach had hauled Livia Cantius through the halls like a common criminal.
The irony wasn't lost on me. After all, that's exactly what I was.
He kicked open the door to his quarters and shoved me inside, slamming it behind us with enough force to rattle the windows. Then he turned to face me, his chest heaving with barely controlled rage.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" The words exploded from him like a physical blow. "You could have killed her! In front of everyone, in broad daylight—you could have murdered another student!"
I lifted my chin, meeting his fury with my own cold defiance. "Maybe I should have. Maybe the world would be a better place without people like Valeria poisoning it."
"People like Valeria?" His laugh was harsh, bitter. "What about people like you? What kind of person are you, Livia? Because I thought I knew, but that... that thing I just watched in the training yard... that wasn't human."
The words hit like a slap, and I felt something crack inside my chest. "You want to know what kind of person I am?" My voice rose to match his. "I'm the kind who fights back when cornered. I'm the kind who doesn't lie down and take whatever abuse people like her want to dish out."
"Abuse?" He stalked closer, his eyes blazing. "She said some cruel words, so you decided to butcher her? That's your idea of proportional response?"
"You don't know what she said." My hands clenched into fists at my sides. "You don't know what she—"
"Then tell me!" He roared, close enough now that I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. "Tell me what could possibly justify what you almost did! Tell me who you really are, becausethe woman I thought I knew wouldn't have blood on her hands and smile about it!"
The silence stretched between us, taut as a bowstring. I could see the pain beneath his anger, the hurt that was driving this rage. He'd seen something in me today that had shattered whatever image he'd built of who I was, and now he was scrambling to understand how wrong he'd been.
"You want the truth?" I asked quietly. "All of it?"
"Yes." The word came out as a whisper. "God help me, yes. I need to understand what I've been... what we've been..."
"What you've been fucking?" The crudeness made him flinch, which was exactly what I'd intended. "Is that what you can't say? That you've been sharing a bed with someone you don't actually know?"
"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't make this about sex. You know it was more than that. At least... I thought it was."
The pain in his voice almost broke my resolve. Almost made me reach for him, try to comfort away the hurt I'd caused. But comfort was a luxury neither of us could afford anymore.
"Was it?" I asked instead. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you decided I wasn't worth the trouble the moment you found out about my other lovers. Funny how quickly 'more than sex' turned into running straight to Valeria's bed."
