Page 41 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
“How about-“ I choke on my words. Ashen takes a step forward and I take one back, throwing my hand out to stop him from coming closer. My voice is low and fierce when I finally wrestle it under control. “How about the time he peeled back the layers of my abdomen to see if the magic of Semyon’s serum meant I could finally carry a child, Ashen? How about that? What about when he and your sister took… When they…”
I press my lips together. My breath stutters in my chest. My gaze falls to the floor and I try to push every memory of those moments in the dungeon into a prison in my mind. I can’t relive anymore of what was done to me. What was put in, what was stripped out. What was stolen.
“Lu…”
Those two letters pass Ashen’s lips with so much rage and pain and sorrow. And yet, it feels like not enough. Not nearly enough.
With a monumental amount of effort, I pull my sorrow back beneath the fury that lives under my skin. I wipe my eyes and take a deep breath. I turn back to the sea. I’d rather be haunted by the memories of my lost sisters than the horrors of this newest hell. “I will die before you put me back in that dungeon, Ashen. I will die before you use me as a weapon and do to the others what you did to me.”
“I am sorry, Lu, for what happened to you,” Ashen says. I look over at him. I can see how desperate he is to move closer, but he holds himself back. “I did not do those terrible things, Lu. I did not see or watch them. I did the only things I could to fix it.”
I let out a resentful laugh. “Ashen, you made me promise to do as you asked and then, when the time came, you said nothing. Literallynothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“In The Maqlu. You made me promise. If you asked me to run or leave you behind, you made me promise that I would. But you never asked me to do it. Not in the club. Not when you stood on the dais in the Shadow Realm and looked down on me. I trusted you, just like you asked. And then you let me down.”
“There was no time at The Maqlu, vampire,” Ashen says, ignoring my jabs. “And you could barely even stand in the Kur. We were surrounded.”
“Iwas surrounded.Youwere on the dais, looking down at me from on high.”
“Do you really think I had any other option? You have no clue how powerful Eshkar and Imogen are, Lu. We were outnumbered, outmaneuvered. If I died, what hope would I have of saving you? Because your fate would have been the same either way.” Ashen’s voice is clipped with desperation and his own brand of anger. “There was no way you could run. There was nowhere to run to. The only solution was to endure.”
I give a derisive snort as my rage climbs my throat and lands like bitter poison on my tongue. “Endure. That’s easy for you to say. You had to endure what, exactly, as I suffered immeasurable torture in your dungeon? Dinners and wine and dancing atBit Akalum? The freedom of traveling to and from the Shadow Realm? The love of a woman you lost long ago who was returned to you as a prize for my capture?”
“She isn’tyou,” he snarls, his voice booming into the night above us, the light in his eyes turning to black flame. He stalks a step toward me, then another. I plant my feet and refuse to move, even though the adrenaline surging through my veins screams at me to run. “I called in every favor. I cut every deal. I broke every rule. And worst of all, I knew that each moment that passed might mean I had already lost you. That each moment you endured in the cage might be your last.”
Ashen stops so close that I can feel my eyelashes shudder with the current of his breath. I press my molars together until I’m sure they’ll crack. My nails etch crescent imprints into my palms until I smell blood.
“If you would go to those lengths just to see your weapon completed, then I pity you, Reaper. Because you went to all that effort and still you will lose your war. I’ll see to that. I would rather burn your realm into nothing but dust. I’d rather die than win your battles for the Shadow Realm, oh mighty Master of War.”
Ashen’s hand snaps out and grabs my throat. Smoke billows from his back as his wings unfurl and consume the empty space behind him. Cinders and sparks rain across the stone.
“So there is a demon in you after all,” I say, tilting my head up in an invitation to squeeze. “I had convinced myself once that you weren’t like the others of your realm. Prove me wrong for the last time, just in case I didn’t learn my lesson. Finish it, so I don’t have to do it myself.”
Ashen’s thumb follows the line of my jaw in a caress so slow and gentle it could almost be imagined. “Such an elemental force of nature you are, vampire. Acerbic. Brave. Far too reckless,” he says, his gaze following every angle of my face.
“Stop wasting my time with your patronizing Reaperisms and kill me already.”
“I will not harm you. And I will not let you harm yourself.”
Ashen’s eyes brighten with determination. And then his expression takes on a fleeting wisp of apology. Before I even have time to react, his other hand crushes a delicate glass ampule to my chest. The liquid within the broken vial mixes with the blood of superficial cuts in both our skin and rolls between my breasts.
“What the-”
“Sabbi Leucosia libbu amaru nanam. Batiltu iskakku shul libbu istu abatu ana simtim alaku.”
A sharp breath cuts through the burn that still lingers in my throat. For a heartbeat we just glare at one another. “You fucker,” I seethe.
Without breaking our tangled gaze, I whip thekaikenfrom the sheath at my thigh and try to bring it to my neck, but my arm shakes as though my wrist is held back by an invisible hand. I pour all my strength into the effort. I grit my teeth and growl as I try to force my knife closer. The blade doesn’t budge, not even a millimeter. But I already know it won’t, because I know his words and what they mean.
The heart of Leucosia is a tempest. Stop the weapon of her heroic heart from destroying her own fate.
Ashen has taken away my power to end my own life, the last option I have to ensure I won’t be dragged back down into the depths of hell.
The purest rage funnels through my bleached knuckles and I turn my knife to Ashen, managing to swipe his shoulder with the dagger before he knocks it from my hand. His grip returns around my throat and he pushes me across the balcony until my back is up against the wall. My heart thunders beneath his other palm, the broken glass pressed deeper into my skin.
“Excellent. At least I can still cutyou.”
