Page 5 of Oracle of Ruin

I swallow thickly and wade a bit further out in the river. “Okay, I’ll meet you there. I think I’ve just got something in my hair.”

Kya dips her chin in acknowledgment and continues further into the woods, clothes in hand. She doesn’t quite believe me, but leaves me in the river anyway, silence confirming her departure.

A small splatter of a raindrop hits my face as I tilt my head skyward. The small pricks of water plop against my cheeks like tears before running down the length of my face, pooling at the soft skin beneath my chin.

Slowly, I sink beneath the water until I can feel the current’s slight pull. The pressure builds the lower I sink, and my head begins to throb. When I am low enough that not even the sun can hear me, I drop my jaw and scream.

My eyes squeeze shut against the biting water that enters my throat as I expel all the air from my lungs. Bubbles float to the surface, the only proof of my grief reduced to small pockets of air, soon to pop and be washed away with the minnows.

No tears fall, even if there is no one to see them. I haven’t cried since she died, haven’t allowed myself to. But I see her every waking and sleeping moment. Her smile, her laugh, and her beautiful anger—all of it haunting me, but never blaming me. Somehow, that hurts worse.

I scream until the bubbles stop.

Chapter3

Verosa

The dreams always start this way—as dreams. Somewhere over the course of the night, the images shift and I am left where they always leave me: alone in the dark at the mercy of whatever horrors might await me.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am aware that I am dreaming, that when I wake, I will be in our camp, in Rowan’s arms. Physically safe, for at least a moment. Yet somewhere in the haze, my heart considers the idea that I might never wake from the true nightmare.

Tonight, I await the usual demons—Irene and her taunts, Ophelus and the hollowness of his eyes as he watched Tanja bleed to death. Some nights, Torin or Blaine find me and scream until their voices are replaced with my own in the waking world.

Tonight, a voice I prayed I would never hear again speaks softly from somewhere within the darkness. The back of his hand softly drags across the nape of my neck, the other trailing down the back of my arm until it finds my wrist and squeezes. I can feel the ridges of his burn scars on both of his hands. The scent of charred flesh fills my senses and I hold my breath as long as I can before his thumb running along my pulse jolts me back to my senses.

I rip myself free of Lucius’s grasp and whirl on him. My fists are raised at the voice, light begging to seep from my fingertips. Even though I cannot see him, I know he is there, lurking in the shadows. They cover for him, unlike Rowan. In contrast, the shadows greet the mercenary like an old friend, Lucius an accomplice.

I curl my fingers into a quivering fist. “I don’t need to remind you what I can do with these,” I warn, and send out a shot into the dark.

A low chuckle to my left echoes. “No, you do not.”

His mirthless voice comes from behind now and I spin to be met with nothing but darkness. In my panic and rage, I lift my fist into the air, allowing a brilliant beam to cut through the blanket of darkness surrounding us. The sight of my once-handsome fiancé is undoubtably jarring.

His dark eyes are completely white and his eyelids are gone, scorched off where I drove the heel of my palms into them. I intended only to blind and impair him during our fight in the tower, but my rage took over and caused further harm than I intended. He now wears an open tunic with the sleeves rolled up, displaying every inch of where I burned him. The angry red ridges form a web of scarring up and down his muscled chest and arms. My handprints are distinct on his forearms, the imprint of my fingers where they dug in to push away.

Despite not being able to see where I am, he advances in my exact direction. Each of his footsteps hit the ground, rattling whatever plane of existence we occupy right now.

This isn’t real. Wake up.

Wake. Up.

“This is all real, my love.” He stops just a few feet from me and frowns. “Do you hate me so?”

The question causes a pause only momentarily.DoI hate him? I hated the idea of him when we first met, the man who would take away my future and what little illusion of freedom I had. Then he bloomed into a friend who granted me outings from the palace, allowed me to go further from home than I had ever been allowed before. Who sent flowers to my room every hour when he thought I was sick, and taught me archery.

Then he destroyed the only person that could make me forgive him.

“You killed her.” I spit a large glob of saliva onto his face. I don’t need to say who or why. Tanja will never be more than a servant to him, just as I have never been more than a step along the way. He loves me in the loosest form of the word.

Completely unbothered, Lucius lets my spittle slide to his chin before rubbing it off with an embroidered handkerchief. He tosses the used piece of cloth to the ground and grinds his heel into it. The shadows leap, and it is gone into the inky darkness.

“You killed her. You let her take that knife after you tried to kill me. If you hadn’t done that, she would still be alive.”

He steps forward, his straight brow furrowing. His hands seek my wrists, interlacing his fingers around them as I prepare to strike.

“Stop.”

Still, he refuses to release me, holding me tighter to the point of pain as I struggle. His scars scratch across the smooth surface of my skin and I fight the urge to recoil. In truth, it is not due to him or the scars themselves. No, it is becauseImade those. Even as much as I despise him and blame him for all that has transpired, I still did that to another person. Feeling that proof against my flesh… I’m not sure which of us I hate more.

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