Page 289 of The Lands Defying
His hand moves to his cheek, that is now missing a chunk as he shouts and curses.
When he looks back at me, I bare my teeth. “You will not touch my wolf.”
He curls his lip at me, and electricity fills me again. I scream, legs kicking out wildly as I feel like I’m being torn from the inside out.
Then it’s quiet once more as I hang limply, my breathing ragged.
But the reprieve isn’t long as Charles starts his attack up again.
“Ahh.” I cry, looking into his crazed eyes as blood drips down from his mutilated cheek.
“I can do this for a long time, Lasandrhea. You should have been good.”
“Fuck. You.” I wheeze, and he intensifies his power as my body shakes, the chains clanging with it.
It goes on and on. He plays with me, toys with me while telling me all the things he’s going to do to me.
I slump completely forward, blood dripping from my mouth as he raises a hand and produces a ball of violet.
Of the power he stole from my mother.
That could kill me, but so be it. I would rather die than let him have me.
“You are weak,” I say in a weak whisper. “You had to steal power to become something.”
“Shut up, you bitch,” he growls, and my body lights up once again.
I breathe ragged breaths when it stops. “You will not win. You will die.”
“No one can stop my goals,” he says vehemently, and I see him patting down his cloak.
“Did you fuck a beast to get some power from the below?” I wonder. Cazier said they came from there.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I laugh, but it turns into a bloody cough. “You look like their bitch.”
He sets me alight from within, again. “How dare you—”
The floor begins to tremble, and the pain in my body stops.
It’s a slight rumble, the grass vibrating beneath the beasts. Then some little stones bounce on the platform below me.
Charles growls as the rogures and the beasts turn toward something behind them, their hackles raised, and I also look.
I squint through my bleary eyes, at least, nothing at first. Just darkness and the shadows of the woods, until a shape comes into view.
I squint my eyes, my head feeling heavy, exhaustion weighing down on my bones, but I would know that shape anywhere.
I laugh, my lungs causing me pain every time I breathe as Charles growls.
“Oh look,” I say breathlessly, my words slurred as I look to Darius as he rides on Drax’s back. “You wanted an Heir? Well, now you have two.”
Eighty One
Rhea
“Get him!” Charles shouts to the rogures by his side, and I watch as they pause for a moment, then they do as he says, snarling and running to where Darius comes.
