Page 17 of Court of Lies and Deceit

The sound of my own voice sends a bolt of shock through me. I sound so young.

“I’m so, so sorry,” my younger self keeps saying in a choked voice.

I can feel tears rushing down my cheeks.

At last, my younger self looks up from the pile of broken glass, which lets me see the rest of the room. My heart jerks as I find both of my parents standing there, staring down at thedestroyed glasses in shock, as if they broke just seconds before this.

Then they look up at me.

For a moment, only that surprise remains on their features. Then it starts.

I can see their expressions start to shift. Can see every excruciating change as their faces transform into mirrored masks of pure resentment.

Pain spears through me, so intense that it feels as if someone just punched straight through my chest and ripped my heart out. The force of the heartbreak makes me stagger backwards. But the scene before me doesn’t change. The younger me remains standing in the exact same place. I try to look away from my parents’ expressions, but I can’t. No matter how much I move my head, the younger version of me keeps looking in the same direction. Which means that I am forced to watch it too.

“No, no, no, please,” my younger self pleads in a voice full of panic and desperation. “Please, don’t hate me. I didn’t mean to… Please, I didn’t mean to?—”

“You always ruin everything!” my mother snaps from where she is standing on the other side of our kitchen table. That awful soul-shattering resentment burns in her eyes like flames as she stares at me. “Why can’t you?—”

The scene around me disappears in a flash. It’s so jarring that I stumble backwards. My foot gets caught on the edge of a carpet, and I just tumble down on the floor in a heap of limbs.

My head spins and my heart aches with pain. Blinking, I try to clear my vision and get my wits back, but the room around me is blurry. I wipe a hand over my eyes and it comes back wet. Stunned, I slide my hand down my cheek and find that that is wet too. I must have started crying at some point.

“You bastard!” Isera screams, her voice hoarse and sounding like it’s going to break any second. “I will fucking kill you for?—”

Her words are cut off abruptly.

I snap my gaze in the direction her voice came from.

For a few seconds, I can’t make sense of anything that has just happened this past minute. Then at last, realization comes crashing into me.

Orion has nightmare powers. He can pull bad memories from our heads and make us relive them. I can’t remember the exact day that I just saw in my vision, but there have been plenty of days like that in my life, so I know that it is a real memory that Orion has dug out.

He must have done the same to everyone else, because they are all scattered across the room, looking dazed and disoriented.

My gaze darts to Isera, who must have figured out what Orion did to us faster than the rest of us. But she is no longer threatening him. Instead, she is cowering on the floor, gasping and whimpering in fear. Orion towers over her, his black and silver eyes glowing with magic.

Then he cuts off the flow of his magic again, and Isera collapses to her hands and knees.

I drag in an unsteady breath, still trying to clear my own head.

Orion leans down and wraps his hand around Isera’s throat. With commanding moves, he pulls her up by the throat so that she is on her knees looking up at him instead.

“Watch your mouth,” he warns. Threats drip from his voice like dark poison, and his expression is one of merciless power. “With my magic, I could break you within a matter of hours. I could make you so desperate that you would kneel and suck my cock just for a chance at a moment’s reprieve from my power. You live and breathe only because of my mercy, so I would be very careful if I were you.”

Isera drags in ragged breaths, her chest heaving. But there is no fear on her face as she holds Orion’s stare. Quite the opposite.She is glaring up at him with a promise of pain and death in her eyes.

A vicious smile slides across her lips. “If you ever stick your cock in my mouth, I will bite it off.”

I tense up, half expecting him to kill her right then and there. But to my surprise, he just slides a slow and deliberate look up and down her body.

“Yes, you really would, wouldn’t you?” he muses.

But he doesn’t look angry.

He looksintrigued.

I stare at him. At Isera. At the beautiful but now messy dining room with knocked over chairs and dazed fae and dragon shifters scattered across the floor.

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