Page 21 of The Eye of the Fifth
She stopped dead. Rain pounded the top of her head. Her voice was a lower murmur as she turned tohim and said,‘What did you say?’
‘Kyra!’Rosary hissed.
‘I’ve wondered for years if your blood is as thick and dark as theirs was.’ Cristian surveyed her blood on his blade. ‘I wish Lady Lilion would just let us kill you too. Maybe she’ll let me buy your oaf of a brother instead.’
Kyra began to tremble.
Not with the bone-deep cold that came with the rain, but with the monster that was stirring with her rising fury from a life-long slumber. A monster that had always been there, laying dormant and malnourished of attention.
It growled, ravenous for blood, begging to finally have its freedom.
Rosary whispered, begging. ‘Kyra,please, let’s go!’
Kyra could barely hear anything but the pounding of her own pulse. ‘You…youkilled them?’ she rasped.
Cristian shrugged. Heshrugged.‘It was a joint effort. Much like this. Though you’ve proven a lot harder to over power than them. Even your father. It was a bit pathetic, to tell the truth.’
Visions of her parents, weapon-less and swarmed by the mob that surrounded her now, clouded her senses. They had not been fighters, not like she was. Even with the enhanced strength of a fae, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Her mother had likely never even wielded a blade.
‘Kyra, please!’
‘Say that again,’ she demanded Cristian. A deadly calm slithered over her skin.
The mercenaries behind Cristian were slowly getting to their feet. ‘I said, it waspathetic.The great daughter of the famed warrior Winvara Daeiros went down like a sack of shit.’
That was the moment Kyra forgot who she was.
The monster within writhed to the surface as she streaked toward Cristian. Rosary called after her, and the mercenaries moved as one into formation to counter her, but what they saw on her face made their sneers drop, and the bitter tang of terror soon coated the wet air.
Kyra hadn’t drawn her blade.
No. She would do this with her bare hands. With her soul that was stained with red.
She relinquished a roar that pierced the air.
The mercenaries ran the other way. Cristian slowly backed away too, face no longer sneering, limbs clumsy, as if it were an otherworldly, merciless creature prowling after him.
Kyra pointed at him.
And smiled.
Breath pounded in and out of Cristian’s mouth as Kyra gained on him. He turned, a pitiful attempt to run from her, and she sprang.
Her fingers dragged through his hair and he yelped as she wrenched him backwards. She didn’t hear his whimpering words, not as she sank her teeth into his throat and tore through flesh and veins.
Blood poured from Cristian’s neck, spurting like a broken pipe. As he fell to the ground, lips soundlessly moving, Kyra sat atop his dying body. She grabbed his chin in her hands, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were wide, the light in them fading fast. In an unnervingly calm voice, she told him, ‘This is for them.’
Then she ripped his head from his neck.
For a moment, she stared down at his face, forever frozen in a mingled expression of terror and shock. Then she screamed into it, guttural and full of grief and pain, her tears splashing onto his bloodied and rain-drenched cheeks.
That was when she felt it.
A slumbering power stirred within her. The monster stretched its wings and limbs, drawing up and up in mounting excitement. Free, finally free touseher, free to be one with its conduit.
Driven by that force, Kyra smashed her fist to the ground and watched as a fissure split the earth apart. The mercenaries fell one by one into the severed alleyway, their screams like a lullaby to Kyra’s ears. The stone walls buckled and fell too, smashing the heads of those whose desperate fingers clung to the jagged ground.
