Page 42 of Crown of Betrayal and Blood

My world tilts. Fragments. Splinters.

“Mother?”

The anguished greeting wrenches from my throat, containing a plea for her to reply and render the reality before me false.

No response.

I slide to my knees beside her and shake her shoulder. “Mother, please, wake up. Please.”

Nothing. Her body lies motionless, as do the soft hands that provided a lifetime of comfort.

Apart from a single strand that clings to her wound, Lynnea Axton’s hair remains perfectly arranged in a cluster of dark golden curls atop her head.

That one out-of-place tendril glued to her neck with blood claws at my skin, the sight suddenly unbearable.

She’d hate that. She’d hate anyone seeing her looking less than perfect.

A feverish purpose invades me. I tug the strand off her skin and swipe it on the sleeve of my gown. Blood transfers to the fabric, the stain growing as I continue to rub. “Come on, come on. It needs to be clean. She’d want it to be clean.”

Switching to the other sleeve, I keep cleaning until the fabric no longer turns red with each swipe. With shaking hands, I tuck the freed strand into her curls and rock back on my heels.

There. All better.

As I stare at her pale face, reality finally sinks in. Grief strikes like a tidal wave, dragging me down into suffocating depths. She wasn’t my biological mom, but she was mine. My anchor. And now, she’s gone.

This can’t be real.

“Mother.” My whimper sounds like a wounded animal’s. I choke down a sob as pain pulverizes my ribs and shreds my heart into a million tiny pieces.

I kneel beside her, clutching her hand, while memories pummel me with unrelenting force. I flash back to the night when darkness descended and the drachen attacked. Terrible images of broken bodies with their throats savagely torn open and shadows feasting on their blood assault me.

Mother’s throat is torn, but no creature drank her blood. The untouched crimson splatter is almost obscene, a silent witness to her passing into the next world. In death, her eyes don’t scream of terror but instead whisper of sadness, her final emotion forever painted onto her still face.

I pull her hand into my lap.

Questions swirl in my mind as I peer into my mother’s unblinking eyes.

What the hells happened? Who would do this? How did her attacker get inside the palace? Where are they now?

“Lady Lark, what is…oh.” A young guard not much older than I am, with a boyish face and tawny hair kneels beside me, his voice distant through the fog of my shock.

His name tickles the back of my brain, but it takes a bit for me to remember. Donovan? That seems familiar.

Several more guards arrive, surrounding us with their questions, their need for answers I don’t have.

I nod, mute.

There’s nothing I can offer. I know nothing. This horror has no explanation, no reason.

The pain carves a hole in my heart. “She’s my mother. Why? Why would someone…”

“Tell us what you saw.” Yet another guard has joined us, his gaze flitting from me to the weeping maid and back again.

“Nothing.” The maid chokes between sobs, her voice barely audible. “I was bringing dinner, and then she was just…there.”

The heavy, tangible weight of grief threatens to crush me. I wrap my arms around myself to hold together the pieces of my splintered soul. Mother is gone, and with her, a part of me I’ll never get back.

The guards swarm around me, their voices a cacophony of urgency that I barely register.

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