Page 67 of Lies That Bind
“I had to protect you,” he said, and the confirmation caused a sob to rip from my throat.
What was happening?
Kohen had been using me this whole time! He wanted revenge for his father’s death, and so he killed mine and spun it as protection.
My devastation quickly turned to rage. My skin began to smoke.
“You killed my father?” I needed to hear him say it. I had to be sure.
“Aisling, listen, your father was behind the attacks on you at school. He wanted you dead?—”
“Lies!” I snapped, and a wave of fire flew from me and slammed into him, knocking him back. His eyebrows burned off along with half of his shirt, but his skin was fine. He and I shared the same gift of being impervious to flame.
He looked heartbroken. “I love you, Aisling! But he brainwashed you. He was evil and?—”
I exploded with more fire this time, but his own wall of flame flew from his hands and came out to meet mine. The two walls collided, causing a bomb of heat to explode in my face. I didn’t care. I was devastated, numb, dead inside.
First Jace, now him. Would men always betray me?
I knew I had to kill him. He’d just admitted to assassinating my father, the emperor. My numbness quickly turned to absolute hatred and rage.
This isn’t happening.
Onyx got closer to Kohen, and he slipped his leg over his creature, mounting the black dragon. “Look through his office. You’ll find proof of what I’m saying,” Kohen begged me as the walls of fire we’d erected between us died out at the same time.
‘I need you,’I told Liana. He was going to flee. If he did, I’d use my power on him. I’d control him and force him to stay while I removed him of his head.
“I’m sorry, Aisling,” he said, again with the most heartbreaking expression on his face.
Sorry?He’d left my sisters and me orphans, and he was sorry?
It wasn’t until Onyx’s tail swung out and cracked me in the side of the head that I realized he meant he was sorry for that. Not for killing my father.
I tried to stay conscious, to hold on to reality, but the blow was too hard, and everything went black.
Chapter
Fifteen
Icame to with Liana hovering over me and half a dozen soldiers beside her with swords and bows drawn. Their various creatures were scattered across the field, looking all around for a threat.
‘Are you okay?’Liana asked.
I had a splitting headache but nodded as all the memories came rushing back to me.
Kohen killed my father!
I stood, swaying a little.‘How long have I been out?’
There was a siren going off on base and people running around in every direction. The circle of soldiers around me looked ready to fight off a threat.
‘Maybe twenty minutes,’she guessed.
I slipped my leg over her back just as Commander Ledger ran up with half a dozen soldiers behind him.
“All the Imbrians have fled the base.” He looked at me wide-eyed. “What the hell is going on?”
Of course they did. Anika, Meera, Dev, Kian, they’d all go with him.The traitor. The traitor that I almost just saidI love youto. The traitor who kissed me and told me I’d one day be his wife! What a fool I’d been to fall for that nonsense.
