Page 29 of Queen of the Wicked
“Mama, please—”
“Get out!” she screamed, turning her voice outward toward the village. “She’s brought demons with her! Someone help! Demons at my door!”
My breath leaves me in a rush. Doors fling open. Footsteps gather. Torches ignite. People I have known since I was a child now look at me with fear and hatred.
I feel a hand grab my arm. I don’t know if it was Rowan or Kaius, but they force me to run. We run into the trees, hearing my mother call after us, calling me the demon’s whore. Someoneelse shot a wooden arrow that missed Kaius by inches, even with his speed.
The trees grew thick, and the air grew cold. Branches snapped in our faces and roots tripped up our feet. The world grew darker.
And when we stop running, we realize we are firmly in the clutches of the Blackwood.
Twenty-Six
Adelasia
I had dreamed of this moment for so long. Not the rejection, but the reunion.
I imagined falling into her arms and crying until my body shook apart, imagined the smell of home and the warmth of relief.
But the fire in her hearth had long gone cold. The bed she once shared with my father sat untouched. And the moment her eyes landed on Kaius and Rowan, her love turned to venom. Her sobs to screams.
When we finally stop running, I turn to Kaius, fury and accusation poignant on my tongue.
“You never sent it,” I whisper. “You promised me you’d send her my letter, but you never did, did you?”
Kaius does not flinch at the accusation, and his silence is answer enough. The air between us has cracked like glass, all the jagged little edges pointed toward him.
My chest heaves, a new wave of fury rising up through my chest so quickly it makes me dizzy. “I died for you,” I spit, stepping closer, rot-blackened hands trembling. “I tore myself apart for you, let myself become this monster for you. The one thing youoffered,youoffered, Kaius, was to let my mother know I was alive. And you lied. You lied like you always do.”
“Adelasia–” he says, his voice low and rough,
“Do not feed me excuses!” I shout loud enough to shake the trees themselves. My eyes burn, and my nails dig crescent shapes into my palms. “You let the only family I had left believe I was bled dry by vampires while you held me in your arms. How could you?”
Kaius’ face tightens in shame, but I keep going. “Do you even care how that makes me feel?” I whisper. “It feels like I traded my life for a man who will never trust me with the truth. Like everything I’ve suffered through has been for someone who would rather hide me away in silence. And did it work? Was it worth it, Kaius? To know I was walking into that village a half-demon. Was it satisfying to watch her reject me, knowing the only place I had left to go was into your arms?”
Kaius’ jaw locks, but Rowan steps between us.
“It was me,” he says quietly, looking down in shame. “He did send it to your mother. I stole it from the scout who was supposed to deliver it.”
The silence is suffocating. I turn sharply, unable to stand the sight of either of them, their faces carved from guilty stone. I begin walking. I don’t even know where, but I walk with my arms clutched around my middle like I can keep myself from splintering. There’s a fracture in me that I can no longer mend. Something about seeing my mother, already worn to the bone with grief, rejecting me like vermin–it tore through the last bit of hope I had that I could live as both who I am now and who I was then.
I’m not her daughter anymore. I have no family. I have no home outside the marble walls of the Obsidian Palace.
I have nothing.
And maybe she was right to see me as something else, because it’s how I was raised, too. To hate the demons. To fear them. To run from them.
I hear Rowan and Kaius follow behind me, and the thought of them makes me sick.
I stop walking.
The trees whisper above us, ancient and brittle. The path into the Blackwood is lined with twisted roots and bones of forgotten creatures. The sky is dark here even when it is day. It is said the sun does not reach this place. Only rot and madness do.
I am made of both now, aren’t I?
I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’m a girl or a god. If I’m light or if I’m rot wrapped in flesh. I don’t know if the hunger I feel at night is grief or power.
