Page 11 of A Heart of Crimson Flames
My mate was gone.
I had never thought it would be possible—to lose a mate. I thought when she died, I’d die, too, neither of us ever having to live without the other. What sick, twisted fate had been dealt to me? To be given the briefest love and hope and happiness and then have it be yanked away just as fast. It felt like my heart was being shredded to ribbons. I wanted to cut my chest open just to see its tattered remains.
Trays of untouched food sat sickly sweet on the table beside my bed, but I felt no hunger. I no longer felt anything at all except deep, unrelenting sorrow, like I was missing a limb.
No, like a part of my soul had been torn away.
I hadn’t realized the sky had grown dark or the moon rose high in the sky until the door to my bedroom opened and Evres strolled in. If he’d knocked, I hadn’t heard it, but I was certain he hadn’t bothered. He paused at the foot of my bed, his lip curlingin disgust at my sorry state. I was too broken to even be afraid. I knew what was going to happen.
“Get up,” he commanded and I had just enough shreds of self-preservation to do as he said.
Although a voice inside me asked what was the point now? What was I stalling for? There would be no escaping, no rescue attempt right around the corner. Nero was right. Calla and Grae were the only Wolves left in the Golden Court now, and after Taigos’s betrayal, Olmdere was entirely alone in this battle.
Olmdere needed Calla more than ever. My twin would want to storm off into the night to rescue me as they had in the past, but that was before they were a queen. And Calla and I were trained from birth to put duty above all else, even those we loved. Was there even any Wolf left in the Golden Court to send to my rescue now? Grae? As much as he loved me like a sibling, he would never leave Calla on their own—for which I was grateful even to my own detriment.
The list in my mind dwindled with every passing heartbeat. Hope faded. With Maez gone... that meant there would be no rescue at all.
As I walked around the bed and stood before Evres, my soul shriveled into nothingness. Should I even try to flee? Should I ram a blade into his throat before dragging it across my own? Or should I just fling myself from the window and end this life before he could take everything from me?
The latter felt so appealing. Because everythinghadalready been taken from me...
Evres’s fingers trailed featherlight up my jaw, smearing a tear down my wet cheeks.
“If you think these tears will stop me,” he murmured, his wine-laden breath hot on my lips. “They won’t.”
I watched him through thick, wet lashes. The words were bitter on my tongue as I said, “Yes, Your Highness.”
“You won’t miss her,” he told me as if he could commandme to just forget the love of my life. “Once you’ve been properly fucked by a real Wolf, you won’t remember her at all.”
He moved so quickly I didn’t have time to react, grabbing me and shoving me on the bed. His bruising, frantic hands grabbed me by the knees and yanked me to the edge of the bed. I was numb, not even able to quite process what he was doing—what he wasaboutto do, even though he’d said as much aloud. That’s how thoroughly I was already finished with this semblance of life.
That’s when a deep rumbling laugh echoed from the corner of the room. We both froze, turning toward the shadows that seemed to cling to the corner, so impenetrable even our keen vision couldn’t pierce through its veil.
The figure took a purposeful step forward and the shadows dissipated like clouds on a windy day. She stood there like wrath incarnate. An apparition that couldn’t possibly exist.
Maez.
Her eyes were filled with a violent green light, reflected from the skitters of emerald lightning zapping from her hands and flashing through the air. Her short-cropped hair was slicked straight back, new scars upon her lip and brow. She wore all black—fighting leathers and a flowing obsidian cloak that seemed to eat up the last of the candlelight.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Am I interrupting something?” Maez asked, her voice deeper than I’d ever known it to be.
I hesitated. I wanted to run to her, to call out to her. But while itwasher—I was certain of that—it was someone else entirely, too.
“You,” Evres seethed, taking a step toward her and reaching for the dagger strapped to his hip.
“Me,” Maez said, and held up a hand. Evres froze, his face contorted as if he battled some invisible grip to get to her.
“Maez,” I whispered, my voice cracking. Fresh tears welled in my eyes. To see her here—so whole, so real.
But then her shadowed eyes turned toward me and there wasnothing behind her stare—no love, no relief—noMaez. Only cold indifference. It shattered me like a frozen lake fracturing under a careless footstep.
Maez returned her attention to Evres. Her hand hovering in the air squeezed and Evres’s hands jerked, wanting to go to his throat, as if that would stop his face from turning scarlet, as if he could untie the invisible noose around his neck.
“You think you can toy with what ismine, puppy?” Maez’s voice was laced with lethal vengeance as she squeezed tighter.
I stood, rushing to her side and putting a hand on her arm. She stepped out of my touch. Unsheathing the dagger belted to her thigh, she flipped the blade over and proffered the glinting black hilt to me.
