Page 78 of The Blood Queen

The veins bulge in his face. His shoulders hunch.

But he’s the same, a sad, mangy little man clinging to the boots of those he thinks will lift him higher, and I see him clearly in this moment. Through my own rage, calculating his weaknesses, tallying up the blood of his I could bathe in, I see him.

And he’s nothing.

I think, deep down, he knows that.

He’s feral now, so when he hefts his sword and stabs straight at my chest, I know the full force of his strength is behind that blow. It’ll smash through my ribs, pierce my heart.

If he had even a speck of anything to him, he’d strike true.

But he’s nothing.

I wait until the tip of his sword does actually catch the fabric of my vest. Then I twist to the side, letting the blade slice along my sternum while I slam my own short sword up. It sinks home right under his arm, wedging smoothly between two ribs, skewering his lung straight through.

Cecil wobbles to a stop on a wheezing gasp.

The whole of the soldiers gathered around pause, silence choking the area like a hand grabbing a throat.

My father tips to the side. Crumples in a useless heap.

The sword slips free of his body, coated in vivid red, and that monster in me wants to roar.

The control I had is slipping, wavering, and I watch as I dip two fingers in my father’s blood, wiping some of it off the blade. I’m a spectator, frozen in my own head.

I smear that blood straight down the center of my face.

Something happens. Something like my blackouts before. Only I’m aware of a force behind it, of knowing whatever I’m doing is more.

Cecil’s blood leads to others, soldiers who charge at me, thinking they can take me down, but they’re fools, the lot of ’em. Their blood decorates my blade, and I smear it across my cheek, take more and mark my neck, wearing it all, wartime trophies.

That, I remember.

The blood coating me.

I only half know how I get it, flashes of blades and beastly growls.

Unleashed.

The blood is a key.

This rage is free.

I’m a whirlwind, a storm, a riot in the night. I’m everything wicked and vile, and I’m hungry.

Until I turn.

And she’s here.

In her soot-stained nightgown, her body still peeling from the burns, gaping red and leaking over charred black skin.

She’s everything vile too. And I do not know what will be left behind when our two forces collide, but I will find out. I will sunder the world for the chance to bathe in her blood. For—

For.

For Alyth.

A gasp. A ripping breath gouges open my insides more painfully than the nicks and cuts I got while fighting. I want to cry out, want to scream her name and hope it echoes to where she is, in the fae realm or this reality.