Page 71 of Mate of a Monster

“You let him out.”

Creed doesn’t deny it.

“What? Who?” Sinner perks up.

He gave her to him.

She fucking came here for him.

What’s to stop her from leaving, now that she got what she wants? She could disappear, never to be found or seen or—

Stop! You don’t fucking care. You want her gone. She’s nothing.

So why does it feel like my pulse is going to tear through my skin? Why is my throat on fire and my chest suddenly hollow and raw?

Because she’s everything.

Fuck!

“Something is happening here,” Creed warns. “The Tideward Academy attack was only the beginning. Vicente warned us of the continued cracks in the wards. You all feel it just as I do.”

“What does that have to do with what you did?”

“Recent events prove we might need her help whether you like to admit it or not, and the only way she’s giving it is if we give her something in return. So I gave her back her friend.”

Sinner whistles and Knight sighs.

“Haide didn’t have fucking friends.” My eyes narrow, thinking back to what she’d told me about her life. “What’s his name?”

“Zevryn.”

I grit my teeth. “That ain’t no fucking friend. That’s her ex fuck-toy.”

“Whoops…” Creed shrugs into his drink. “Probably not her ex anything now.”

I flip the fucking table and take off. Creed’s chuckle nearly brings me to a halt but I push forward. He just baited the monster and the monster came in for that bite.

“Where are you going?” Knight calls after me, but even his tone is full of mockery.

Like he already knows.

How could he, when I don’t?

All I know is my legs are moving, carrying me through the arched corridor that connects the dining hall to the east wing. I’m not thinking about why. I’m not thinking about the ache that’s been gnawing a hole through my chest since dinner started. I’m not thinking about the way Creed said Zevryn like the name was supposed to mean nothing and didn’t land in my gut like a fist wrapped in rusted iron.

Her fuck-toy is out. Walking around. Breathing the same air she’s breathing.

My boots hit marble. The corridor opens into the grand foyer, and the shift in atmosphere is immediate. Gold leaf climbs the walls in intricate patterns that catch the low firelight, threading through veins of deep purple stone. Black iron chandeliers hang from vaulted ceilings so high the flames at their tips look like some part of a fucked up sphere. This room was built to make people feel small. To remind them whose palace they were standing in.

It doesn’t work on me. I grew up here. I know every crack in the foundation, every secret passage behind the panels, every stain the cleaners couldn’t scrub from the stone after Father’s more creative council meetings. These walls sweat my fucking essence.

I’m halfway across the foyer when the main doors groan open, and a trickle of unease creeps down my spine.

“Legend.” Breathless, Arabella sweeps through them in a rush of white silk and blond hair, her cheeks flushed. Her hand catches my arm. “Wait.”

I stop. The ache dims. It always dims when she’s close.

“I need to head out.”