Page 12 of Emylia

I needed to pull myself together.

I refused to be this weak.

I refused to be this broken.

Anger—my near-constant companion—tightened around my throat. Ignoring it, I splashed my face with the warm water, washing away any evidence of my momentary weakness.

Without wasting another second, I stripped off until I stood naked, skin prickling from the cold air.

Warmth tingled against my toes as I lowered myself into the tub. The water lapped around me, heavy with the thick, cloying scent of vanilla.

Droplets slipped silently from my skin to the floor as I scrubbed myself raw, dragging the coarse cloth across every inch of my body. I made sure to clean beneath my nails—every last skerrick of dirt gone.

I wanted no trace left.

No reminder of what I'd done.

Who I had just buried.

Large puddles began to form around the tub, the smell of vanilla thickening until it was almost suffocating.

Vanilla.

His favorite.

Without warning, hysteria slammed into me. Tears blurred my vision as I clawed at my skin, desperate to scrub the scent away.

It clung to me, taunting, sweet and merciless. Irrational paranoia gripped me in its iron fist. No matter how hard I tried, the scent wouldn't leave me. It tainted me in the sweetest, cruelest form of torture.

Gulping down shallow, broken breaths, I staggered to my feet and grabbed a cloth, wrapping it around myself with shaking hands. I stumbled backward, putting as much distance as possible between me and the bathtub of vanilla death.

The anxiety had come like a lightning strike—fast, brutal—but like lightning, it was fleeting, leaving only the scorched wreckage behind.

Only the foul taste of bile and the jagged remnants of heartache remained.

Pulling a ragged breath through gritted teeth, I forced myself to move. One numb step after another, I climbed the spiraling staircase that led to my room.

Each step heavier than the last.

ChapterSeven

Gorgeous gray light filtered through my stained-glass window, casting vivid colors across every inch of the space. My mother had let me design it—a tribute to the beast of legend. A creature Sebastian and I had claimed as ours long before either of us understood what it meant.

The signet of the realm. The guardian of fire. A Cindralyx.

A monster born of myth and ash.

A wolf with the wings of a phoenix—feathers forged in flame, eyes glowing with the fury of a dying star. Branded by fire. Blessed with eternal life. A creature too wild for worship, too sacred for slaughter. It was destruction and resurrection, fury and salvation, bound in one immortal shape.

I looked up at the window.

The stained glass shimmered with color and heat, fractured by sunlight peeking through cracks in the clouds. The wolf was frozen mid-leap, teeth bared in a snarl, wings flared wide behind it.

Each feather had been cut from slivers of ruby, amber, and obsidian, catching and scattering every flicker of flame. Fire danced through the reds and golds, casting shards of molten light across the floor.

The wings alone stretched the length of the arch.

And the eyes—Gods, the eyes—followed you.

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