Page 99 of Her Dark Promise

Circe gathered my hands. “You need not hide your feelings from me. I am at your service, Princess. I, too, have had my reservations about the burnings. The king is much too fast to cry, witch.”

Her words felt so wrong to hear, and yet, so comforting.

“Sometimes I think he’d burn anyone he suspected, even if he loved them.”

Warning bells rang inside my head—I was talking too much, letting myself speak too freely.

“He will not burn you, dear girl,” she assured me. “Your dreams are not always warnings, but fears. You think if he finds out your secret, he will—”

“Don’t say it,” I cut her off.

“You are ashamed, but you shouldn’t be.”

“I live in shame!” I cried to her. “I have something inside me that my father hates. How do you live with it?”

“My family loved me,” she said warmly. “My magic did not scare them.”

I couldn’t fathom it, but was envious at the thought. “What happened to them?”

A moment of silence passed between us, where I wished I could read her mind. “Most died and the rest… They left, ran far away. They were too scared to stay.”

“But you stayed?”

“I am good at hiding who I am, and there’s only so long we can run. At some point, we just have to learn to live amongst the rest—to pretend. Over time, your magic will understand that it must pretend, too. It will feel less chaotic, and eventually, you will have trouble using it. It will bury itself. You just need to give it time.”

I wanted to believe her; needed to believe her.

“But you must learn not to fear it,” she advised. “Fear is only going to make it stronger…more unpredictable. If you start to trust it, it will start to trust you.”

I snapped my eyes open, it was just a dream, only a dream. More like a memory. I looked up and found someone directly above me, pressing something cold against my neck.

Bastian.

I tried to move my hand, but he pressed the cold metal further into my throat.

“Ah ah. I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I will kill you before you have a chance to move your hands.”

I took a deep breath.

“What is this going to accomplish? You kill me, and then what?”

He loosened his grip on the blade for a split second before securing it back and spat out, “You are a vile creature and I would be doing the world a favor in killing you.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll never be able to harm another person again.”

“And who is it that you think I am hurting?”

“Where to begin? Innocent lives. Anyone who steps foot onto your land.”

“Your brother?” I teased, knowing that would get a reaction out of him.

He ground his teeth together. “For starters.”

“Want to know exactly what he did to me? How he had me screaming his name?”

I squirmed under him and would have been able to move around more if he wasn’t pinning me down, his thick thighs holding me securely in place… Now all I could think about were those thighs and the damage they could do to my body if he chose to squeeze tighter. I wanted to continue teasing him just to feel the muscles of his thighs constrict more.

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