Page 125 of Court of Lies and Deceit

Steel glints above me.

I yank my head to the side right before Blondie can slam her knife down into my eye.

It hits the ground with a thud and sinks into the grass right next to my cheek.

“You ruined him!” she snarls at me, and yanks the blade back out of the ground.

I ram my dagger towards her side. She throws herself sideways, evading the strike but also taking her weight off me. Scrambling to my feet, I yank my dagger up again to block hers as she thrusts it at my ribs.

“Oleander wasmine!” she growls, her eyes feral as she jabs the knife at me again. “And he was perfect! He was strong and dominant and ruthless.” Shoving my blade aside, she swipes at my throat. “And now, he’s a trembling mess!”

I throw myself backwards, evading the swipe to my throat. She launches herself after me, fury crackling across her entire face as she rams her blade at my chest. I yank up my own dagger to block it. With a flick of my wrist, I shove her knife away and slam my fist towards her jaw. But she’s moving too fast. Too frantic. Too angry.

“He was perfect!” she screams at me. “And you ruined him! You ruined everything!”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut.

They strike at something deep. Something that throws me off guard. Because they are so eerily similar to my mother’s words. My mother’s parting words before I left the Seelie Court.We loved each other. And you broke us. You ruined us. You ruined everything.

My stomach turns and my chest tightens.

Because regardless of whether it happened because I created emotions of hatred in my parents’ chests or if they simply started resenting me of their own free will, she is right. I did ruin them. No matter what the answer to that new question is, the fact remains that I ruined their lives with my magic.

Pain slices through my skin.

I suck in a hiss and yank my head back. Fumbling, I try desperately to pull my focus back to the present. Blood slidesdown my skin from a shallow cut across my cheek. I was so thrown by Blondie’s words that I’ve barely been paying attention to her knife.

Slamming my fist into her wrist, I manage to shove her hand away before she can land another hit.

Those awful words still echo inside my skull.You ruined everything. Pain still rips at my heart. I can’t breathe. Goddess above, I can’t breathe.

So I turn to rage instead.

Lifting that massive lid inside me ever so slightly, I breathe in some of the burning rage and searing hatred in there until that fire fills my soul and smothers the pain. I summon my magic.

“I ruined him for you?” I snarl at her, blocking her next strike. “Well, let me do the same to you then. Then you can be ruined and perfect together again.”

Fear flickers in her eyes for a moment.

And I know, deep down, that I could have latched on to that already existing spark. But I don’t. Because Icravemore.

Summoning a separate bone white flame of fear, I shove it into her chest.

She gasps.

And pleasure floods my body. Pleasure andpower.

Holding her gaze, I stare into her yellow and red eyes as I increase that flame of fear. And I drink in the sight as terror floods those previously so angry eyes of hers. I breathe in. Deeply. Pleasure and utter satisfaction thrum inside my entire soul as I keep watching that fear grow in her eyes.

It’s intoxicating. For someone like me, someone who has never had any power, not even over my own life, the feeling of having this kind of complete and utter power over someone else is so intoxicating that it’s making me delirious. I hold her life in my hands. Her mind, her very soul, is mine to shape as I wish. That knowledge, combined with the addictive pleasurethat comes from creating emotions out of nothing, sets my whole soul aflame with ravenous hunger.

More. More. More.

I wantmore.

Cutting off my connection to the blond woman before me, I turn towards the rest of the White Faction. Blondie crumples to the ground, shaking hard and throwing her arms over her head to protect herself. Whimpers spill from her lips as she cowers on the ground at my feet.

I ignore her.

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