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A deep crease had formed between his brow as he extended a hand to me and I stared down at it for a moment before turning my eyes back to the flames.

“I deserve to burn,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.

I had hurt her.

Hurt her.

The only person I knew in this world that didn’t deserve to be hurt. And still, after taking my beating, after letting my words rip her to shreds, she still only showed me love.

Ididdeserve to burn after what I had done to her.

I wished I could take every second of it back, every word I had said—every blow that I had landed. I hadn’t meant any of it but thisrage, this hellfire, was consuming every corner of my being. I could see it in the way she’d looked at me when she dragged herself from the floor, I had broken her heart. I was the one person she trusted to never wound that part of her, and yet I had still done it in such a cruel and unspeakable way.

I pushed myself from the ground, dragging my eyes away from the flames and locking them on Andrues.

“Why are you here?”

“I needed to make sure you were all right,” he said, rising from the floor. “Despite what you may try to convince yourself of, you are not alone.”

“Iwantto be alone, Andrues. I don’t want or need you here,” I snapped as the anger began to rise again.

But I was screaming inside.

Screaming at whatever demon was controlling my heart. Begging it to release me and stop the poison it was spewing from me. To stop hurting people just so I wasn’t alone in this agony.

“I do not care,” Andrues said, unfazed by the malice dripping from my words as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You are not well, and I do not care if telling you that wounds you—if it makes you foam at the mouth with fury like the wild beast you have been behaving like.”

He took a step toward me and I stilled.

“I am the very hand of death, Ataliia, your rage does not scare me. So inject your poison—fill me with it. It will not kill me.”

The words vibrated from his throat like a sinister rumble, a sound that sang to the devil crawling inside my body.

My teeth locked around my tongue, biting down on the fury readying itself to unleash on him. Blood filled my mouth and I swallowed it back as I finally pulled my gaze from his. My fists clenched at my side as I turned away and walked toward my bedchambers, shutting the double doors loudly at my back.

The sound of my heart beat in my ears like death’s drum as I rushed to my coat thrown over the edge of my bed and pulled the tonic from its pocket. All I wanted was sleep, to have one second of peace from this hell I had built around myself.

I tore the cork from the vial’s opening and pressed it to my mouth, making sure to swallow every last drop of it.

Screeching,horrifyingsoundsfilledthe dark room, echoing off the walls of my bedchamber like talons dragging on the surface of glass.

“Ataliia!” A voice cut through the shrieking and I felt hands on my shoulders, frantically shaking me. “Atallia, wake up.”

My eyes snapped open to see Andrues standing over me.

The screams were coming fromme, were fleeingmythroat.

I tried to bring my hand to my mouth, to clamp it shut and silence the screams that were shredding my lungs, but it was like my veins had been filled with lead.

My limbs trembled violently, a cold sweat pouring off of me, drenching the sheets as they clung to every part of my naked body, plastering the silken fabric to my skin.

Andrues’s grip tightened around my shoulders but my eyes refused to focus, the nightmare still clinging to the edges of my mind like a thick, suffocating fog.

“Ataliia, what did you take?” Andrues hissed, dragging me from the bed.

His voice sounded distant,scared.

But my limbs refused to move, refused to listen to the commands my mind was giving them. My head fell back as I was lifted into the air, lifted against his chest, and I could almost make out the stones in the ceiling between the black veil that danced over my vision.