Page 130 of Her Blood Revenge

‘Lies. He wouldn’t!’

I scoff my anger at her.

‘He left you behind when the guys took you. He didn’t even look for you.’

‘He loves me!’

‘He locked me in a room and tried to force me to suck his dick, Thalia. When we were at the palace for his swearing-in, he cornered me and would have ended up raping me if it weren’t for the guys. And you were there as his bride-to-be. He did not and will not love anyone but himself.’

She keeps shaking her head.

‘Believe what you want. Your opinion of me is very clear, and my opinion of you is just as ugly and disappointing. I do not want nor need someone in my life who hates me as much as you do. I’ve got the self-loathing thing covered. Thank you. Especially when all I did was love you as a best friend, and you repaid that by fucking Cole behind my back the entire time. That, maybe, I could forgive. I didn’t want to marry the limp dick mother fucker anyway.’ She flinches at my vulgar language. Earth witch girls aren’t raised to hear such things. But fuck her, silly little cunt. ‘But when you stood there and watched as everyone tooktheir turn to cut me with that moon dagger, and when you implored me to return with you at the king’s palace, knowing they wanted to torture me to death, that was when you lost any hope of redemption to me. And now I tell you your fiancé tried to rape me as you were tucked away in your bedroom and that he has just helped Neve kill our entire coven, and you still defend him. Now I am just plain disgusted by you.’ I pull back the vines with a sweep of my hand and gesture to the strange little town behind her. ‘You won’t kill me. I won’t let you. So leave, Thalia. Take your ridiculous sense of loyalty to a rapist and fuck right off.’

I turn and kneel in the dirt, holding the earth grimoire and wiping away my tears before she can see them.

I would never have turned on her like she turned on me. I wouldn’t have even left my enemy to the fate she left me to. And if she had told me someone tried to rape her, I would have believed her in a second. I focus on the symbol. Or try to. Perhaps I just pretend to. As long as I’m not looking at her, I’m happy.

Thalia kneels before me, her hands gently tucked into her lap as she looks at me. Her finger dips into the dirt.

Why didn’t you let them kill me?– she writes in the dirt.

I shrug. I’ve been asking myself that for a while.

She taps on the marking I drew in the dirt, her brow raised as if asking me what it is.

‘The blood queen used this marking to kill the coven.’

Her eyes fixate on the earth grimoire between us. My grip tightens as I hold onto it.

Her fingers twist around each other as she struggles with the urge to reach out and grab it. But I think she knows thatif she did do that, I would react. And she would not enjoy the outcome.

Why did she kill all?– she writes.

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘She waited for the Athir celebration to do it, though.’

She rubs out her words and writes others.

To boost power of spell?

‘We think so.’

I open the grimoire and flick through it. She leans over to peer into the pages.

Her brow furrows, and she looks at me in confusion.

‘What?’ I ask.

Looking bewildered, she writes:Empty.

‘Empty? What’s empty?’

She nods to the pages.

But the pages aren’t empty. There are words, notes, pictures and all manner of scribbles. True, most of it is nonsensical or in a language I have no idea how to read. Or the script is so small I think I’ll need a magnifying glass to see it clearly. The pages are full of not only information, but the colour of thrumming veins.

She points to the book and then to her eyes.

‘I can see what’s written on the page,’ I confirm. ‘You can’t?’

---