Page 42 of Heir of Broken Souls

And then one night, he snuck into Elysia’s room.

The bile that rushes from my stomach makes me yank Knox out of the room and into the hall. I shake my head profusely. “Donotmake her feel or see those memories again. This isn’t necessary. We just need to know her motives, Knox.”

A shadow passes over his face, his thumb brushing back and forth over my hand resting in his palm. “We’ll go to her later years. I just don’t want to miss a decision like Hazel’s, which was made years prior.”

The sound of her name makes me flinch.

Swallowing thickly, I drop my gaze from Knox’s, which has grown soft with tenderness. “Can we try to find where I’ve met her before?”

He stops short. “She’s lying?”

“I know she is. My gut is telling me she’s not a stranger.”

Lifting my head once more, my heart pounds frantically as Knox’s sapphire eyes lock on mine. Without a single word, they communicate everything within his heart. He leans forward and places a feather-light kiss across my forehead. “Very well, come on.”

It feels as if we walk down her halls of iron for hours, yet I know it could only have been mere minutes. The labyrinth of her mind is overwhelming as we turn corner after corner, pass hall after hall, door after door. Some of which have screams emanating from them.

No wonder she doesn’t care about her life. Life hasn’t dared to care about her.

I remain in the hallway with Knox while he probes each door with his power, watching and assessing each moment, looking for the one that could even so much as hint at her allegiance with our enemy. With every door, there’s no moment of anger and betrayal from Knox, but his face does grow paler, horror-stricken.

We’re passing a particularly heavy door when Knox pauses, cocking his head to the side as he listens. Then he straightens, sucking in a sharp breath. “It can’t be.”

Chapter17

The Memory

The bastards will burn. They will bleed for their heinous crimes.

The skin on my forearm peels, dripping with blood as I thrash against the tree they’ve tied me to.

The rope burns my wrists and ankles, but I don’t care. I tug and tug and tug, pulling as hard as I can. Despite the voice in the back of my head telling me it’s impossible, the sight before my eyes will not let me stop.

My mother and two sisters scream at the top of their lungs as the assailants that came for us in the middle of the night pin them to the forest floor. They kill them so painstakingly slowly in a show of mockery, forcing me to watch the life leave their eyes.

They’ve pulled them so close to my tree that with every slash and plunge of their knife, the blood sprays my white nightgown and blonde hair.

Marking me red.

I thrash again, tears pouring down my cheeks in rivulets.

I try to note the details of their bodies, but they're concealed by the black billowing robes, the hoods that cast them into shadows. And with a piece of my sister's torn shirt shoved down my throat, I can’t breathe, let alone scream for help.

Not that it’d be much use. We are so far from civilization that they didn’t even bother gagging my sisters and mother.

They know no one will find them.

They will not rest until they lie dead at my feet.

Because their master isn’t done playing with me. He isn’t done seeing through my mind.

“Ready to watch the show, Elysia?” he purrs.

Chapter18

Delilah

Knox and I stumble back into our bodies with such a jolt my breath hitches. My gaze snaps to Elysia’s wrists and ankles, where rope burns mark her skin, matching those of the vision I receivedmonthsago.