Page 48 of When Storms Collide

My heart was beating fast enough that I thought it might jump into my throat as I inched towards the staircase carefully. I had never made it this far before, and there was no telling when Nik would be back. I had no idea if there were Noctanimilling about on the first floor. I was blindly hoping to get lucky one more time.

My next step had the floorboards creaking beneath the carpet and I pressed my eyes closed, internally cringing. I waited in silence for one long moment, but no one came. The board creaked once more as I shifted my weight off it with my next step, and as I sent another prayer up to the Mother, the door at the end of the hallway flew open.

Shit.

I lifted my eyes, expecting a horde of Noctani to appear before me, but it was only Giselle. The beautiful Noctani who had challenged Nik down by the entrance to the cells. Whose face now bore the scars of his claws.

I took a deep, steadying breath as I took a step backwards away from her, the floorboard creaking beneath me again.

Curse that fucking floorboard.

“What are you doing out of your quarters?” she asked me, quirking her perfectly manicured eyebrow up at me.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before the words even had time to come out, Giselle was before me, her hand wrapped around my throat. She lifted me off the ground and I kicked against her, pulling at her hand. Her nails dug into my skin.

“Let… me… go… ” I gasped between ragged breaths.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Another few moments and I would black out.

She cocked her head to the side as she narrowed her gaze on me. “I have no plans to let you go. I will do what he failed to do. I will bring you back to Donika.” She paused for a moment, her nostrils flaring wide. “You smell like him.”

I tried to reply, to kick free or claw her hand away from my throat, but all I managed to do was flail through the air.

She released me with a disgusted expression, her lip curling. “To think he would take awitchto his bed.”

I coughed as air rushed back into my lungs, pressing the palms of my hands against my knees as I tried to fill my lungs with air.

“What is so special about you?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

I rubbed the sore skin around my neck, my gaze finally meeting hers. “Are you not still a witch, only one tainted with dark magic?”

She laughed at this. “I am so much more than that, you cannot even begin to comprehend.” She ran her gaze over me, and I could see the jealousy simmering in her onyx eyes. She was tall and lean, with a small waist and long, impossible legs. Her dirty blonde hair was cut to shoulder length, her black eyes lined with kohl.

“And yet, it isn’t you he takes to his bed.” I said, taking another step back to put distance between us.

Her gaze filled with rage in an instant. “Not yet, anyway.”

Her words had my stomach doing somersaults, and I tasted bile rise up the back of my throat. Would Nik take another into his bed now that we weren’t bound? Now that he might not even be capable of love? I’m not sure if it is something I could forgive… and the thought of him with another almost had me emptying my stomach right onto the carpet between us.

Giselle could see that her words had rattled me. She took a step towards me. “He will tire of you, and when he does, he will move on to me. I can blow his mind like you never could,Stormshade.” She spat the word as Donika did. As if it was a curse.

“And yet I have been here for what, two weeks? Three? And hehasn’t.”

I never saw her raise her arm but between one blink and the next, her palm was against the side of my head, smashing my skull into the wall. It gave beneath me, my head crashing through and hitting the stud behind the plaster. I saw stars behind my vision, but I never pulled my gaze from her.

She wasfast.

“How dare you speak to me like that,” she raged, a fistful of my hair in her grip as she wrenched my neck back.

No.

No, no, no.

Not my neck. Not my magic.

I aimed to push away from her, to fall to the ground and scurry back into the bedroom, but her grip on me was relentless, and she was much stronger. I needed Stormslayer, and I needed itnow.

She bared her fangs, black veins pulsing out from her eyes. Her head snapped back, preparing to break skin, when I was suddenly wrenched away from her.

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