Page 39 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
Darkness and pain.
I was no stranger to either, but they felt different this time, edged by a grief I couldn’t quite name. It gnawed at me, just out of reach, punctuating each brief moment of consciousness, the faraway sensation of losing something I couldn’t quite remember.
Or someone.
I heard my sister’s voice, felt her lips on my forehead. I’m here, Evy. Cool hands on my skin. A trilling sound that seemed to echo all the grief that was twining through the marrow of my bones.
Starlit tears spilled onto a pool of blood that froze into a shimmering crimson rose, beautiful and unspeakably sad. Then the rose exploded, the shards embedding into my skin.
It hurt. Everything hurt.
Not like this, Morta Mea.
The voice burned into my soul, furious and unrelenting, wresting me back from the edge of darkness, step by painstaking step.
They will not take something else that belongs to me.
So familiar, that tone, that fury, that unending possession that drove me to madness.
I don’t belong to you.The rebuttal sounded weak, even in whatever halfway reality I existed in.
A dark chuckle echoed in my head, dripping with a bitter sort of…relief?
Then my mind went silent, but it didn’t matter now. I was awake.
I was alive.
My eyelids were glued shut.Or perhaps they were just too heavy? Too something… But I was tired of existing in the dark. I forced them open, sucking in a breath that didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to.
Why did I expect breathing to hurt?
Light stabbed at my eyes and memories flooded back in jagged pieces.
Chains, a blade, a face I wanted to forget.Kyros. My world narrowed to that one word, that single evil name, then snapped outward, leaving me dizzy with the question.
Where the hells am I?
I shot upright, my chest burning as I tried to take in air. My vision was still blurry, my heart thudding so hard the whole room seemed to move with it.
Instead of stone beneath my fingertips, it was silk sheets. Instead of the smell of blood and ancient earth, there was something familiar in a way that plucked at the farawaysensation of grief that had plagued the last…however long I had been out.
My chest tightened. Memories flashed through my mind in time with the rapid beat of my pulse, each one hitting like another blow. Kyros’ blade sliding down to bone, shackles rubbing my wrists raw, the scent of my own blood.
I glanced down at my arms, my fingers trailing lines where I could still remember the bite of steel. But there was nothing there but clean, smooth skin.
I blinked, my eyelids still heavy.
There were no stitch marks. No blackened scars. Nothing to prove the truth of the horrors my mind insisted had been done.
Was that a relief? It should have been. Didn’t I have plenty of scars? Still, the disconnect felt…jarring.
A thin, indignant squeak broke through my thoughts.
“Batty?” My voice was raspy with disuse.
Or from the screaming.
I finally lifted my gaze from my unblemished skin, searching the room frantically for signs of my skathryn. Light filtered in from high windows, framed by midnight curtains, while a giant frosted chandelier glittered like icicle glass above, and flames roared in the hearth.
