Page 196 of Powerless

“Everything I’ve endured was because ofyou,” I snarl, lifting my head off the ground despite how heavy it feels.

“Hmm.” He sounds almost thoughtful. “Very true.”

Blinding pain jolts through my body once more when his sword carves a line above my heart. A strangled scream escapes me, nearly drowning out his soft words. “Then I will leave my mark upon your heart, lest you forget who’s broken it.”

His slices are deep and disgustingly slow. He goes over each line he’s carved again and again as screams tear from my throat. I close my eyes against the grin twisting his face, unable to bear looking at this man any longer. No, not a man. Amonster.

Tears slip down my cheeks against my will, mixing with the rain and blood splattered across my face. I know exactly what he is carving into my skin, can feel it with each swipe of his sword. He is branding me before death, and it’s almost more painful than the agony racking my body.

I don’t know how much time has passed when he finally lifts the sword to admire his handiwork. “There.” Casual. He sounds so casual, so cruel. “Something to remember me by in the afterlife.”

Then he lifts his sword, aiming the point down at my chest.

No. No, no, no—

He smiles. “Stabbed through the chest. Like father like daughter.”

I cannot die.

The king towers over me, gripping the hilt of the sword, raising it up, up—

I will not die.

I’m desperate, driven by madness. Even lifting my arms sends shooting pain through my body but I ignore it as my fingers claw at his boot atop my chest, one hand clamped around his ankle and the other around the leather toe of the shoe.

And with every bit of strength I have left, I twist.

He grunts in pain, swaying unsteadily.

Perfect.

I yank his foot forward, hard. The injury to his head combined with the injuries I’ve so graciously gifted him have made him weaker, made him wobbly.

And he lands with a hard thud on the wet ground.

I don’t hesitate before scrambling towards the sword that slipped from his hand. I crawl, pain and adrenaline mixing to create a dangerous concoction of recklessness. A rough hand closes around my ankle, dragging me backward through the mud.

I scream, frustrated and fearful, as my fingers brush the hilt of the sword before I’m pulled away. My head whips around to see the king’s face contorted with fury, equally bloody and muddy. I kick back as hard as my broken body will let me, and when I hear a crunch, I know my heel has found its mark.

The king cries out, the sound gurgling as the blood streaming from his crushed nose runs into his mouth. I wrench my ankle free from his grasp and dive towards the sword, finally folding my fingers around its hilt.

I drag myself to my feet, every movement painful. I’m soaked in blood, soaked to the bone by the pouring rain. I stagger towards the king, breathing raggedly as I drag the sword through the mud behind me.

NowI’mhovering overhim. Funny how quickly our roles have reversed. Me, about to take a life. Him, about to be the life I take.

The teeth he bares at me are stained red with blood. “Don’t you want to know who it was that killed your father, Paedyn?”

That one sentence stalls the sword I’m about to shove through his chest. He rasps out a laugh before choking on his own blood.

“I already know who it was,” I bite out through clenched teeth. “I saw you drive the sword through his chest.” I turn my attention back to the weapon gripped in my hand, unable to bear this anymore and ready to—

“Wrong.”

I still before echoing, “Wrong?”

He lets out another wheezing laugh, and I don’t wait for him to stop coughing up blood before digging the point of my blade into his chest as I slowly say, “It wasyou.”

He coughs out his next words. “Funny how the mind can make us see what we wish to. You already hated me for what I did to your kind, so it must have been easy to convince yourself it was me who drove that blade through your father’s chest.” A bloody smile stretches across his lips. “But it wasn’t.”

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