Page 83 of Feral Guardian
They’re foreign and strange.
Terrifying.
Powerful.
“The queen?” he asks, his voice strained. “When did this happen?”
“For years, ever since Belle disappeared. She took me…down. Down to the Pit. She marked me. She wanted me obedient, and strong. She wanted to make me something else, my transfiguration—” I interrupt myself with a laugh.
“Gods, she did it. I mean, I did it. She doesn’t know. I never showed her. I was scared. What would happen if I was what she wanted me to be? I could deal with what happened when I wasn’t. I could compartmentalize the disappointment, but I guess maybenot when it ends in my death. And what would I do when that fury turned on my sisters? No, much better when it’s all pointed at me.”
Alastair shakes his head. “You’re not making any sense. Speak slower.”
My thoughts are disjointed. I can’t put them together for him.
Alastair’s fingers trace the glowing black lines of power. I shut them off, covering them up again with my transfiguration magic as I pull away. The marks are still there. I feel them in my bones—in the driver’s bones, and the demon bear’s bones too—but at least I can’t see them.
“Lily,” he intones softly. “Talk to me.”
“Don’t take me home,” I say, looking up at him. His eyes soften as my lower lip trembles. “Take me away from here. Hide me.”
His mouth becomes a fine line and his jaw works. “But youmustbecome queen.”
“Why? Why must I?” I ask.
“Because.”
“Why?” I simmer, my rage boiling beneath the surface like his demon.
He never talks to me. Never tells me the truth.
He grits his teeth and looks away. “You just must. That’s all. I will say nothing else.”
I shove away from him and my back hits the wall. “It’s alwaysbecause.Never a real reason.”
“Lilianna.” He says my name like a command.
“No,” I growl, sidestepping him. We glare at each other, hearts racing and breathing deep. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that. You don’t trust me. You don’t believe me, after I showed you my scars…”
The pain of that knowledge leaches deeper than the wounds my mother inflicted. Alastair doesn’t see those marks and know that I’vebeen wronged. He doesn’t see what I’ve been through. He sees a pretty princess, prim and protected. He sees none of the darkness in me.
“Girl, there’s empty dishes on the tables,” Igor calls.
The staring contest ends, and neither of us won.
“You were dosed with krysanthem,” he says. “Your mind is running rampant. This isn’t real.”
“And my marks? Those aren’t real?” I spit at him.
He growls, throwing up his own sleeves. Red magic thrums beneath his skin and his runes come alight with crackling power. “You think I don’t know what it is to be marked? That doesn’t make your mother evil.”
I suck in a breath. His own mother carved these into his skin?
I lurch forward to touch him, to touch the marks of Yegress and Nol’Ther, of Morgha and Eyzanth. Alastair pulls away, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You’re high, Lilianna,” he spits, like I’ve done this to myself.
I don’t even remember what happened, why my thoughts won’t stay in me.
