Page 4 of Ruin
Scraping two gold pieces across the bench toward the girl next to her, she laughed. “I always pay my dues. I lost the bet.”
The other girl rolled her expressive blue eyes. “I knew Maverick wouldn’t be interested. Seduction never got a girl anywhere with the prince.”
Fuzziness swarmed my line of sight when light flickered to where I stood. I rolled my body away from the light of the flames, pushing myself behind a wall. They’d pointed a torch in my direction, the fire licking around the rag tied to the end of the wood.
“What is it, Dalia?” my target questioned.
“I thought I saw something.”
“It’s getting late. We’ve had our share of liquor for one night.” She chuckled, shrugging it off. “Good night, ladies.”
I pressed my finger against the dagger. I’d sharpened it especially for the occasion. When I heard her footsteps approaching, I squished myself between a gap out of sight. She rushed past, not noticing my presence.
Quiet as a mouse, I crept behind her, using slivers of darkness to camouflage myself. She danced her way through empty corridors, stumbling over her feet as she did. A spray of moonlight fell over the red carpet from a tall, arched window. The girl climbed up onto the edge, grabbing a handful of her skirts off the ground. Stars pinpricked the black, humid night. “Beautiful.” She gasped, looking out over the home she had grown up in. Most of the girls had been brought here as children, then raised within the walls, taught etiquette, and made into ladies-in-waiting, to tend to the princesses’ needs.
I was not bestowed such privilege. I wondered, bitterly, if my sister would cry for her lost friend.
I stepped forward, dagger pointed outward. Slices of white light illuminated my murderous eyes. I enjoyed the hunt more than I cared to admit. I’d attempted the moral high ground, the façade that I was above murder, but truth be told, I was the perfect monster. I had been carved by two decades of hatred, isolation, and pain.
Fear hesitated me when I reached her back. She didn’t turn, too captivated with the world ahead of her. Would it be like slaughtering an animal for my sacrifices? It was so wildly intimate, watching something die. I craved the last moments, wishing I could stretch them out, but in the end, all hearts had to stop beating.
I inhaled sharply. Her perfume lingered around us. She rubbed the side of her neck, then stumbled. She grabbed the frame but toppled, her fingers slipping.
“No!” I grasped a handful of silk.
She screamed and pulled forward, almost dragging me with her. I pulled back with a burst of strength, and the side of the blade pushed against my stomach. We both fell, landing into a heap of dresses and limbs. Her scream had alerted all close to our presence. Footsteps carried through the corridors. She turned her head from the pile we were in and looked me in the eyes. She smelled like spring flowers. Her eyes were large with fright.
“You’re the princess, aren’t you? The one they hide?”
Her chest was heaving, and her hands shaking. I held the handle of the dagger tightly, until my knuckles turned white. There was no way I could kill her, cut out her heart,andmake my escape in time.
I scrambled to my feet, then hightailed it out of there just in time for them to reach her. Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. I gulped in precious air as I reached my room. I ran my hands down the door, looking for the handle. I pushed it down and fell into the confines of the bedroom.
Relief pulled the weight from my shoulders. I hadn’t killed anyone.
Yet.
But all I had done was delay the inevitable.
She had seen my face. No one knew I left my room at night. I could have let her fall to her death, and I should have. She mustn’t have been allowed to see me and live to tell the tale. I prayed she would keep her seeing me to herself, but I knew her type; gossip was their livelihood, and I was the biggest rumor of them all.
Darkness squeezed the air from my lungs. Pain pricked my fingertips. I didn’t sacrifice the girl, and now I would be punished.
***
Eyes paler than the moon watched me from the shadows. Lips bluer than glaciers grinned when I whimpered. Branches reached down like fingers, trying to grab me.
“Yours or theirs?” the man whispered, his voice echoing into a thousand shards around us.
I tried to escape by breaking into a run, but invisible constraints pulled me back, rooting me to the spot. He tilted his head and looked at me from the darkness of the forest. The tree line wasn’t far, but how had I been so stupid as to enter the trees knowing what waited for me?
My heart hammered against my chest. A sheen of sweat coated my forehead. In the humid night buzzed thousands of insects, their songs erupting around us.
The forest was alive, and so was he. No longer a soul that echoed in my thoughts, he was flesh and bone with eyes redder than the flames of hell.
I snapped open my eyelids. My breaths rattled as I sat upright. Looking around my empty room, I sighed with relief. I was alone, but not for long. My master had penetrated my dreams, twisting them into nightmares and warning. I’d never promised him such sacrifice until now, but he was impatient. The keeper of ritualistic magic. The necromancer. The last of his kind. He wanted human hearts… hers.
Yours or theirs.
