Page 126 of Devour
I gave it too much power. I gavehimtoo much power.
“Why?” I ask, the word a near cry. “Killing her served no purpose!”
He had offered to bring her food. Was he always going to end her instead? I never would have known.
“You don’t know what she is,” he says through gritted teeth. “She was lying to you, she?—”
“Who’s down there?” a voice hollers through the dungeon.
My heart stops. My Dread freezes, muscles tense. Slowly, his dark eyes shift into the dungeon, past the girl he just slaughtered.
How did I ever think I could trust him?
My whole body is shaking like a leaf, barely clinging to the branch in a windstorm.
He puts his finger up to his lips. He doesn’t reach for me.
When no more shouts come from the dungeon, I shift carefully in the mix of blood and mud and sewage. I scoot backward.
Haze doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t reach for me. He watches with intense eyes. His chest heaves up and down, like he’s exerting a lot of energy, but really this must be child’s play to him.
He’s killed hundreds of people. Including Lucca. I’m next, aren’t I?
Why couldn’t I have just died before giving my heart to this monster? I could have died with no regret.
When I finally find solid stone ground, I rise to my feet and walk backward toward the pit. Haze reaches me in only two strides. My heart hammers.
“I fucking hate you,” I tell him.
His brow pinches.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I whisper.
He doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he silently slides his mask up over his face and becomes the heartless warrior I’ve always known he was. I’d let myself forget for moments at a time.
But here, I feel that reality like a blade.
Like the blade that just killed her. I didn’t even know her name.
I should have learned her name.
My whole life spreads before me, leading me to this stupid, terrible end.
What was all the suffering for? Why did I fight so hard for each breath? Just to feed the enemy. To let them strip me of everything that has ever made me, me.
I held on to hope with each breath.
My lips tremble. He stares down at me, confusion etching into his forehead.
“Why do you hate me?” he asks finally, voice hushed.
“Is she not enough?” I ask, pointing past him to the corpse we left abandoned.
“There’s more,” he says, examining my face. He knows me well enough to see that, does he? “You left me.”
“You killed him,” I say, eyes closed. It takes so much effort not to cry. No, I will not let them win like this.He will never get another inch of me, I vow.
My body is numb. Floating in space somewhere. Not here on the edge of a draken pit, covered in sewage, and soaking in the blood of an innocent girl.
