Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
I lunged, blade arcing. With a swift slice, I cut through the air, the sword’s tip striking the ground. Blood dripped from its length.
I’d found my mark.
The creature reared back, shuddering as it screeched. It stumbled, weaved toward the riders, and then moved away, its shrieks becoming quieter and less monstrous. Red light lit up the beast’s body, following a scattered network of veins.
My breathing quick, I stepped back, torchlight gleaming off the bloodstained sword. The creature’s legs went out from under it as the two remaining heads collapsed in a cascading, pulsing glow.
Lowering the sword, my lips started to curl up, but my smile quickly froze. Whatever triumph I’d begun to feel vanished.
Something was happening to the creature, and it wasn’t death.
The beast was changing, its size shrinking and shifting under the flickering torchlight. Claws turned into hands and feet. Scales disappeared, replaced by flesh. Pants made of some sort of tattered burlap appeared, and…light brown hair. Suddenly, a male was on his hands and knees before me, trembling.
I knew. Dear gods, I knew before he even turned his head and I saw his features. Still, my heart stopped when my eyes locked with his—blue ones set in a face that had once been handsome but was now thin and filled with stark terror.
My stepbrother.
Tavius.
I went still, but my heart beat faster and faster. Unable to even look away, I stared at him, pressure clamping down on my chest.
He inhaled sharply, his entire body spasming. A guttural, wrenching sound came from his parched, cracked lips. His back bowed, body straining. His mouth contorted, stretching wide. Arms trembling, he gagged as something beneath the flesh and fragile bones of his throat moved upward, creating irregular bumps.
A fine tremor coursed through my arm as spittle ran down his chin. Strands of something several inches long that looked like slender, black ropes knotted at the ends fell from his wide mouth, spilling to the floor. He convulsed and continued to heave. His head kicked back, his jaw popped, and that cruel mouth of his gaped grotesquely around a thicker bundle of rope. Something oblong-shaped—solid and hard—pressed against his throat. His shoulders hunched violently as he gagged. His head bobbed—
Whatever it was worked itself free of his mouth, a handle attached to what I now knew were copper-twined leather strips.
A whip landed on the stone with a soft, reverberating thud.
The whip.
The one I could still hear hissing through the air. Still feel cracking against my skin. The one I had shoved down his throat.
Folding his arms across his chest and waist, Tavius rocked onto his knees. His entire body shook, and his head fell back. Saliva and blood-tinged mucus trailed from his mouth. Blood streaked his watery eyes. Our gazes met.
Time stopped.
It sped up.
“Please,” he whimpered.
My reaction was immediate. I didn’t think. I was past that point. I wasn’t in the cavern before the riders. I was in Wayfair’s Great Hall, bound to the stone feet of the Kolis statue as Tavius humiliated me. Hurt me because he harbored within him the same kind of relentless, rotten evil that Kolis had. Attempted to ruin me, not because he truly believed I was a threat to his claim to the throne of Lasania, but because he was a man, and he could.
Dropping the sword, I snapped forward and slammed the heel of my foot into his side. Bones cracked. I could still feel his weight crushing me… The bastard cried out as he fell onto his back, clutching his side, but all I heard was him demanding that I beg with respect. I kicked him again and again. I stomped him, hitting each and every one of those ribs and the shadows between them that were visible beneath his flesh.
That wasn’t enough.
Neither was his death.
Or the revenge I’d already gotten. Falling to my knees over him, I gripped his hair and jerked his head back. I brought my fist down, over and over, cracking and shattering bone, seeing his sneer when he’d thrown that bowl of dates at my face. I saw only the cruel glee he took in tormenting Princess Kayleigh, not split skin and caved-in bone. I kept hitting him—
“Prove yourself.” A rider spoke. “And slay the monster.”
I sucked in a heady breath and jerked my arm back. My knuckles were smeared with blood. I stared at Tavius’s unrecognizable features. Slay the monster? I could do that. Gladly.
Rising to my feet, I stepped over the trembling piece of shit and picked up the sword. I straightened and turned back to him, dragging the tip of the crimson blade over the stone as I walked back to Tavius.
The promise I’d made to him before whispered in the back of my mind, but this time, I wouldn’t promise to see him burn.
That wasn’t good enough.