Page 63 of The Surrender

“Helped the one who raped my mate like a beast in heat on his very throne? Defiled her before our own cursed people? And killed her in the end?”

“He’s different!” I find my voice in protest, but my words sound too forced, too weak, too hollow. My blood ices over. “They all are.”

Nuriel laughs again. A dark, strange, sad sound. I feel it howling down to my core. Especially after I shut my heart and soul down to them in the woods. Resigned to becoming nothing more than a pet without any grand expectations. Just a girl who plays with monsters.

“Tell me, my Lady, then why did you run? And why did I find you in the woods broken and bleeding? If he is not the monster you claim, then why did you embrace such fear, horror, and woe as I have never scented? Perhaps you are the greatest monster of them all.”

“She is my Queen.”

Terror jolts into me. Kyan stands in the entryway of the cavern, the largest cavern in this system according to what Nuriel shared earlier. Kyan took the bait.

Nuriel chuckles deeply before gripping my hair, yanking me back, and pressing a blade against my throat.

“So good of you to join us, Kyanatu,” he greets the God of Air in an eager lilt. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”

Bone-chilling horror, blood-curdling rage, and heart-shaking agony all threaten to shatter my soul. Because it’s not Kyan staring at me through those dilated pupils.

It’s Shadow.

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I worship her as I should have done in that throne room.

SHADOW

I bring the storm with me.

But the moment I see her...and my old comrade who’d once served under me with his whole heart holding the blade to her throat, I keep the storm behind me. It cracks and splinters the ice but does not break it. It ruffles her hair to feather the strands about her face, but I hold it at bay.

“Shadow, go!” she manages the panicked whimper before the demon tightens his grip, nicking her throat, spilling a line of blood.

While all the muscles in my wings instinctively tighten, swelling to their hardest, I take one step, arms down, palms open in defense. “Nuriel...”

“The wages of your sins are called to account on this night, Kyan,” he croons but eyes my little queen, scenting her blood essence. “I have waited centuries for this night.”

“Yes, centuries for your revenge,” I agree, frozen in place as Nuriel weighs his options, announcing how he could simply slit Quinny’s throat. Or take his time and make it slow.

All the color has drained from her face. She works to remain still and strong, but her fingers tremble where they’ve threaded upon the swell of her belly. A hard swallow betrays itself before the tears stain her cheeks. Her gray eyes hypnotize mine. Such emotion eclipses those deep orbs, they may as well gleam like the first sunrise in the darkness of these caverns.

I was wrong.

She has desired, endured, and she still loves our scars. My greatest scar, echoes Kyan in the depths of our damned soul.

I read the grief on her face, the devastation.

When her eyes stray from the life of her belly to her scars and the whorls of ink upon her skin, I curse. After she ran, she shredded the Queen of the Court of Storms and the Queen of the Court of Ash. In their place, the gray girl has returned. Cold and numb and longing to burn and feel and hurt. But not to love.

We showed her our greatest scar, and then we...I used it like a blade to stab it through her chest. Merikh prevented it from piercing her heart. And now, she’s buried that heart. Retreated where she feels it no longer.

She has returned to a place where she has cut herself, bleeding her soul, punishing her heart.

Kyan brought her to the place where she could love her scars instead of creating more. And now, she has become them again. Drago burned them away. Kyan kissed them with a brush of wind.

And I…gave her more. I am the storm who broke her wings and snuffed out her light.

She has surrendered to the darkness.

But she is still our light...Kyan reminds me.

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