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His obsessive glances throughout dinner had my stomach in knots. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to focus on my conversation with Queen Viktoria. My body screamed at me to both run to him and flee from him every time I felt him look my way. My mother’s words from the enchanted necklace Zuriel had given me echoed through my mind – a warning from beyond this life.
Then, he insisted we dance.
He did not care when I told him he hurt me; his fingers only tightened on my back and in my hair, ignoring the steps of the dance to keep me crushed against him.
Was what I had thought of as intensity and passion purely obsession on his part?
After all, he had spent a large portion of his life with me as his only and every thought. As much as I hated it, I understood where his mind could have gone twisted, exacerbated by our potential mating bond.
A potential bond that nearly tore me in two as I stood in the bathroom of mine and Ruslan’s apartment in Ryza Citadel. I felt as if I were being ripped apart from the inside as one half of me was pulled to the adjacent bedroom, where the male who protected me lay, while the other called for me to run through the halls to find the male who hurt me.
I checked my back in the mirror as I undressed. A darkening mark lay across my lower spine, and I healed it before Ruslan could see. He was still so angry, it ate at my skin through the walls. He’d remained true to his word and given me space to work out my choice until it became painfully obvious that Kazimir was hurting me. I hated that my petite frame made me physically powerless against these large males. The ever-deepening well of power that came from my magic – that was the key to my survival.
Still, Ruslan intervened to protect me, not possess me, like Kazimir was so plainly trying to do. Their fight had been brutal, though not as brutal as it could have been. Ruslan absorbed a knife in his side like it was nothing, then stood, still ready to fight if only to see no harm come to me. If it hadn’t been for Viktor and Vadim corralling Kazimir, one of them would have ended up dead.
Stabbing Ruslan with a knife hidden on his person during a feast to celebrate peace was not the way to win me back, and itwas totally out of character for the male who’d rescued me from the cave in Vasvain, the highest peak in Északi.
Had he gone so mad from loss that it warped his mind?
Grief and anger were intimately intertwined, dancing together as they skewed all sense of reason, space, and time. While my grief had turned into a thirst for vengeance, Kazimir’s had morphed into something oily and sinister.
How would he have reacted if I’d finished my words and told him that I loved Ruslan?
I was too exhausted to think any longer. I turned my head to plait my hair, then winced as soreness from Kazimir’s rough grip bloomed. I healed that too. The past two days had been a whirlwind of emotion, and more tension only awaited over the coming days.
Would the discord between them suck all the oxygen from any room where they were together?
And then there was the matter of uniting the realms. Ruslan didn’t need my help – didn’t want my help – until after I’d made my choice. The reality stung like a whip across my back, and it didn’t occur to me until that moment how much Ididn’tknow what I truly wanted out of life. I’d spent so long only thinking of the next moment, the next problem, that I hadn’t considered what lay beyond solving them, especially what came after choosing between Kazimir and Ruslan.
Did Ruslan fear that I would oppose his goals if I did not choose him?
I was a Félvér, half Angel and half Night Fae with a hint of Crystal and Day, and I wanted to be accepted as I was.
Would my friends look at me the same once they knew?
My head throbbed as a barrage of questions pounded against the inside of my skull, and I shook it in an attempt to silence my inner thoughts. The white-knuckle grip I held over my emotions was all I could do for the moment because I needed to survivethe next two weeks, figure out who the fuck my mate was, and then possibly destroy the world in the process.
No big deal.
Except, it was, and the thought itself nearly sent me into a panic attack. The room swam before me, and my breath caught in my chest. I gripped the counter beneath me with that same intensity, trying to force stillness where there was only chaos.
Too much too much too much.
I was suffocating; there wasn’t enough air.
I can’t I can’t I can’t.
My body was simultaneously freezing and sweating, and I wasn’t sure if it was tears or perspiration that dripped down my cheeks.
No no no no no no…
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the tidal wave of overwhelm back into its typically tightly locked box.
But my inner voice screamed one phrase over and over again until I felt like it would deafen me.
I was not okay.
A truth I’d been hiding from myself, only accentuated when both males stood before me. The pressure of it all crashed over me, forcing my head underwater and drowning me.
