Page 106 of Her Dark Promise

“I’m not a child,” he said. “You were cursed younger than me. You were a child then,” his voice lowered. “You are still one in so many ways.”

I lifted my hand, my bottom lip quivering. I imagined squeezing his throat, fingers crushing his windpipe. I resisted, holding my hand in mid-air. “I want you to shut your fucking mouth, Soren.”

“The temper of a child,” he mocked. “The selfishness of a child. You’d only been with one man before Callum, that stable boy. Does Callum know? Does he know that you’re all talk? That beneath the magic is just a sad, scared, girl, wanting to be loved and saved, but too afraid to ever admit it?”

Emilia gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.

I gripped his throat and shoved him down, his body thumping against the hard floor. He groaned when the back of his head made contact, then gasped, clawing at my hand. I leaned down, my hair dripping to his face, covering us both. I felt the words slip out of my mouth through gritted teeth. “All you had to do was obey the rules. Why couldn’t you stop? Why couldn’t you just listen to me?”

“I don’t know how,” he croaked out. “I don’t know how to stop when I want something.”

“What do you want, Soren?” I begged him, eyes watering.

“I want to,” he pried my fingers off his throat, “show you the ocean.”

Time felt still, the air around us thick with tension. I battled for control, desperate not to hurt him, but my body longed to. I didn’t want to hear him speak again—I didn’t want someone to know my darkest secrets.

Kill him, Circe mocked.Get rid of him.

“Get out of my head,” I shouted. I jerked off him and stood, backing away from him.

He knows too much.Kill him.

“Is that her?” Soren’s eyes widened as he sat up, his throat raw. “You wrote about her in your journal. The witch, Circe. Is she talking to you right now?”

I pounded my fist against my head, trying to silence her, and Soren. Emilia walked closer, reaching out for me. I shuddered away from her. “Please, don’t touch me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

I stood, moved through the chapel door, and took off into the night. I ran down the steps on the side of the castle until my feet hit the green grass and pumped my arms as fast as they could go. Needing the wind in my face, the bite from the chill air. I passed the greenhouse, the castle walls, and the rose garden, and then my feet took me over the bridge. I could hardly register the pain of the gravel cutting into my bare feet as I pushed my body faster and faster.

Then I saw the broken main gate appear ahead and I pushed my body as hard as I have ever pushed it. And ran straight into the invisible barrier. The pain that radiated through my body was something that I had never experienced. The air wasknocked from my lungs and I was thrown back with such force that when my body hit the ground it bounced a few times.

I ground my teeth together and roared. I pushed my body up and wiped the dirt off of my face and it stung. I looked at the back of my hand and found blood. I snapped my head up at the barrier, called my shadows to me, and sent a blast of energy straight at the barrier.

Blast after blast after another fucking blast of energy.

Nothing.

I strode up to the barrier and punched the wall. “I am done! I am so fucking done! Fuck you, Circe for doing this to me!” Punch. “Is this what you wanted?”

I expected her to answer me, but she wasn’t saying a word.

“Shy now are we? Figures!” I threw my entire body into punching the wall. After a while the bones in my hands began to ache, my muscles atrophied from not using them like that in so long. Not even my healing abilities were healing me fast enough before I was injuring it all over again.

I collapsed, trying to catch my breath, and sobbed. “You made me into this. Bloodthirsty. Reveling in the pain of others.” I hung my head. “A monster.”

“A monster indeed.”

I whipped my head up and found an older man standing just on the other side of the gate. Did he just see everything? I needed to kill him before he could get away and tell others about me, but panic delayed me. “Who are you?”

He said nothing.

My thoughts ran rampant, spiraling down scenarios that had yet to happen when I finally took him in and realized that I knew him.

He had graying hair that was pulled back by a strand of leather, and his clothing looked to be finely made, with not onehole in sight. Even in his later years, he looked fit and deadly. And his face. The mirror image of Soren.

Oh gods.

“Father?”

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