Page 155 of Her Blood Revenge

‘Awakeat last, my love. Good. I was so worried I went too hard on you.’

‘I’m not your love. I’m your doom.’

He kneels beside me, sweeping my hair from my face as I try with all I have not to scream or show him my fear. I refuse to even flinch. He looks outwards in the direction of the noise of the horde. I know there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of unseelie surrounding us. He tilts his head, looking down at me once more.

‘It’s a shame things worked out this way,my love. I think you and I would have done wonderful things together. If only you weren’t a blood whore and such a disobedient bitch.’

‘Being a blood whore is the greatest thing that could ever have happened to me,’ I snarl back. ‘It got me the hell away from you.’ I lift my head and sneer my next words. ‘And it took me straight to them. Right into their beds and their hearts. And when they learn what you did, you will beg them for mercy they will never show.’

He scoffs, his smug grin turning into a hateful sneer.

‘Your monstrous men are long gone, beloved. They ran and never looked back. They have abandoned you. To us.’ He takes my chin in his grip and holds it painfully tight. ‘To me.’

‘They would never abandon me. They will come.’

‘They will not.’

I look him dead in the eye. ‘They will come.’

I spit in his face and laugh. But his hand wraps around my throat, and he squeezes hard. Images of the rope around my throat attack me. Of swinging as Archie laughs. He lets me go with a shove.

‘I hear you have flashbacks of how Neve and her sisters died.’ He tightens his grip again. ‘What’s it like to be hung over and over?’ He lets me go and pulls out a dagger. ‘What’s it like to be cut again and again?’

He drags the blade along my cheek, slicing my flesh and making me scream. He stands and puts his boot on my chest. ‘How about being crushed to death?’ He stands on me, laughing like a madman as he does.

Each assault does precisely what he wants. It brings back those images. Those endless days of pain I endured.

‘Why are you doing this!’ I scream beneath his weight. ‘She has decimated our coven. Your family and friends. She will break this world apart.’

He looks down at me with an icy hatred.

‘You killed my family,’ he says. ‘You took my friends. My coven. My magic.’

‘All you had to do was let me go. You would be with Thalia, married and ruling the coven.’ He steps off me, placing a foot on either side of me as he leans down at me.

‘But I loved you. I chose you. We were to have children.’

‘I would rather this fate.’

‘And I would rather everyone and everything burn than see you happy.’

The sole of his boot slams down, and my nose breaks, exploding blood over my face and into my mouth. The world spins, and bright spots blur my vision.

‘Stop playing with her,’ Neve sighs, stopping at my feet. He stands at her side, looking down at me, bloody and broken on the ground. ‘I need her alive, Cole. And conscious.LIFT HER!’

The ropes around my wrist begin to lift me from the ground.

The unseelie pull, stretching me out, separating my arms and legs. Pulling against my bonds does nothing. I scream. My gods, do I fucking scream! I yank, and I shout, but I’m held fast, lifted higher and higher. When I finally stop, I’m on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley filled with unseelie. They all cheer and roar, raising their weapons high in celebration as I’m lifted before them.

My breath is thick in the icy air as I look ahead at the twisted structure built before me.

A great arch of bones.

So many bones stripped of their flesh as they were either left to rot or eaten by insects and birds as they decorated the archways of the human towns.

All gathered here to create one enormous arch of death.

The bones of every blood witch. Of my mother’s coven.

---