And now that I’d seen Diora, alive and well and protected, I felt sort of… free.
And also sort of… finished.
If I didn’t need to protect her anymore, what was there holding me to this world? What reason did I have to keep living?
Vena had always needed protecting too, but she was silently strong. And when I’d been unable to hold on for Diora, she had stepped into that role seamlessly.
They were both fine without me, now.
So what reason was there to get up tomorrow, or the next day, or the next?
A memory flickered to life in my mind, and another shudder tore through me.
The night fae had taken torches to my parents’ castle, and the building was burning around me, and my mother was trying to pull me out, to help me get free of the flames.
I’d collapsed to the ground, my lungs so full of smoke and mucus that all I could do was cough violently enough that I wondered if it would kill me.
My mom had heaved me to my feet, and her desperate eyes collided with mine. They were blue, and sad, yet determined.
“You are going to survive this,” she had told me, her fingers gripping my arms and digging into my fragile skin. “You are the strongest of us—and you are going to live brightly enough for all of us.”
She had pulled me through the wreckage of our family’s home, and had handed me over to the night fae immediately after breaking through the smoking door.
I could still feel the relief in her shoulders as she collapsed to her knees with me in her arms.
And I could still hear her scream a moment later, as the fae ended her life just because they could.
The same group of fae had dragged me to the new, young kings, and shoved me to my knees as Espen put his hand on my head and forced his magic into my dying body.
I could still feel the horrible pain that had accompanied his power—and I could still see his body hit the ground before that group of fae bastards had dragged me, Vena, and Diora to that prison.
I’d taken Diora’s small, crying form into my arms and cooed at her even as they chained the two of us together.
The memories made me shudder.
Those days had been worse than my nightmares, but at least then, I had been too young for the men to assault me.
When I’d turned twenty-one and they had separated me from Diora, everything had only gotten worse.
So fucking much worse.
I shoved those memories away, wiping at my tears with shaky hands.
The anger was better than the memories.
It was better than the depression, too.
And whatever broken, messed up part of me found peace in the knowledge that when I managed to kill Espen, I would join my family in the sun I hadn’t seen in so fucking long.
Chapter3
Espen
Her face had been engravedin my mind for months, but the memories were nothing compared to physically laying eyes on the woman fate had decided I was to belong to.
Stars, she was so fucking gorgeous that my cock still ached in my pants hours later.
The woman was going to kill me, and I didn’t even know her name.