Page 58 of Malcolm

She looked right and saw the wisps of the speaker's white gown. “Ashe, I don’t have a right to go chasing after him.”

Ashe, her white body was nothing more than a mirage or maybe a ghost that just wouldn’t leave Eliza alone.

“You’re carrying guilt that doesn’t belong to you. You don’t have to fight for me; I’m already dead,”she said, turning to face Eliza, she wore a sad smile on her pale face.“You have to let me go.”

“No, I won’t,” Eliza said, clenching her hands at her side. “I can’t. Not until they pay for what they did to us. I want to break them like they broke us. I want to steal into the night and ruin their peaceful rest as they’ve done to us.”

“And who is our enemy?”Ashe asked as she faded.“Is it them or, yourself?”

“Everyone,” Eliza answered, her eyes turning a bright hot amber. “You're either with me or against me.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,”Ashe's voice whispered as she disappeared completely from sight.

Eliza stared at the door for a beat, she turned and walked away from it. She’d fogotten who she was meant to be. She’d lived for her revenge, and she was only moving because she’d picked up the gauntlet. Walking over to the book that sat on the counter, she lifted her hand and placed it on the cover. Her hand began to softly glow and vibrate, just as the book did, the same words slipped past her lips, as her heart began to race, andwith a spark, the book vanished. Leaving behind only a scorched table.

Retracting her hand, she whispered, “So mote it be.”

She looked up at the window, only to frown at seeing something strange in the distance. Two men stood on the sidewalk outside of her cabin; their eyes were staring directly at her. She felt the urge to hide, but another part of her refused to move and her hand lifted abruptly, and black light crackled in her hand at them. “Leave.”

“You smell like the key, but you are not the key; what are you?”

Eliza flinched, surprised that she could hear them even though they were so far away.

One of them lifted a hand to his brow, giving her a mock salute before the two disappeared from view. Her hand lowered, the crackling black energy dissipating.

“Who was that?” she mentally queried.

The goddess didn’t answer, and she didn’t push it. She was exhausted. She reached up and pulled one of the hair decorations from her hair. “I need a shower,” she said to herself as she headed into the bathroom.

Echoes of Betrayal

Malcolm

She wanted him to promise to let her go.

Never.

He’d never let her go. In this big world he’d finally found his mate, a reason to live and strive for a better life.

How could she ask him to let that go?

When he’d been banished six years ago, the world had turned grey, with only the occasional splash of red to keep it interesting. He wanted to be more than just the past to her; he’d already lived a life without her, and it hadn’t been pretty. Theidea of giving his body to someone who wasn’t his mate again filled him with disgust.

The fine line between his true nature and the man he wanted to be was being tested once again.

His closet was filled with the skeletons and lies he’d accumulated over the years.

It was a cruelty of fate, to get his hands on what could save him, only to learn that she was thinking already of their end?

Slamming his balled fist against the wall, he gritted his teeth in frustration. The idea of returning to the hell of being no one to anyone once more caused him to bare his teeth as he held back on the violence that swirled in his belly. He wanted to break something and destroy the invisible enemy she swore would break them apart.

Malcolm wasn’t weak.

He’d never been weak; all his life, he’d been treated like a monster. The face of man was nothing more than a mask to keep himself within the reigns of sanity, pretending he’d not lost everything. The minute he’d tasted his first blood beyond the lands of his people, he’d finally understood the things the ancestors had spoken of.

The rush of bestial urges came with the feeling of barely hanging onto life. It made their participation in human wars all the more understandable. The sensation of looking into an enemy’s eyes and watching the life in them leech from their face was an addictive high.

He’d tried being good.

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