: Chapter 48

Screams. Terrible, tortured screams bounce around my skull, echo in my mind.

Her.

It’s her.

I’m running through the halls of the castle, sweating, searching, screaming for her.

The only response is a cry for help, a beg for mercy.

I throw open her door, bursting into the room and scanning the darkness.

Something silver glints in the moonlight streaming through her open window.

There.

Her hair. It must be that beautiful, silver hair of hers.

But what my eyes land on is not beautiful.

No, it is broken.

She is covered in blood, sitting in a pool of it. Tears are streaming down her face, now contorted in agony.

Pain beyond belief.

Suffering beyond saving.

I catch sight of that silver glint again, but it’s not her hair shimmering like I once thought.

Dagger.

It’s her dagger.

Its sharp point is pressed against her chest, drawing blood that runs down her body and mirrors the tears running down her face.

What gruesome symmetry.

I’m suddenly beside her, kneeling in a pool of blood. Her blood.

She doesn’t see me, doesn’t speak, doesn’t do anything but scream.

Anguish. I’ve never seen such anguish.

“Paedyn! Pae look at me!”

Nothing. No reaction.

More sobs. More blood.

I grab hold of the slick handle belonging to the dagger she is slowly pressing into her heart.

It’s covered in blood.

Blood so sticky it’s clinging to my hands, crawling up my arms, coating me in the one thing I will never be able to wash off.

I never wanted her blood on my hands. Never her blood.

Her head turns, ever so slowly, her tear-streaked face now angled towards mine.

“Make it stop.”

She’s whimpering.

Paedyn doesn’t whimper.

“It hurts so much. Just please make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop!”

Sobs are wracking her body, and I’m holding the knife still while she desperately tries to sink it into her beautiful heart.

“My heart hurts.”

More sobs. More cries to let her die.

This is wrong. This is so very wrong.

Paedyn is too strong, too stubborn, too special.

She can’t die. I won’t allow it. Not by her hand or anyone else’s.

Her screams are splitting my soul, my head, my heart.

I can’t take it. I can’t take it. I can’t take it anymore.

I feel tears stinging my eyes, streaming down my face.

Now I’m begging.

I’m begging her to stay. To live. For me.

I might even be screaming too, sobbing too, shaking too.

“Kai?”

My head whips around, and through my haze of hysteria, I make out a lanky figure looming over me.

There is a familiar boyish grin on his face despite the blood pouring from his chest where a throwing star is lodged deep within.

He falls to his knees, eyes glossy as they bore into mine.

This time I hear the scream rip from my throat as I lunge for him, cradle him, beg him to live.

Footsteps echo off the walls, and I look up to see dozens of bodies surrounding me. All bloody and begging. All victims of mine.

They stare at me, hatred burning in their gazes as they look upon the man who killed them.

I know each of their faces. Each of their wounds that I inflicted.

They circle me. Vultures anticipating a death.

Then I hear a sound I know all too well.

The sickening crunch of metal slicing through bone, of tendons tearing apart, of muscles morphing around a blade.

She slumps to the ground—dagger in heart, lips in a smile.

I’m screaming.

I’m lifting her into my arms, I’m brushing her bloody hair back, I’m saying something, but I don’t know what.

My mind is numb. My heart is numb.

Everything is numb.

She’s smiling in death, as though happy to be rid of life.

Happy to be rid of me.

I am grief. I am sorrow.

I am anguish alike.

I think I might also be dead.

Just decaying on the inside.