Page 164 of Blackheart

Days.

It had been twodays.

“Where are Beck and Amzee?” I asked again.

Ansel’s head hung low, dark hair falling over his face. “I don’t know.”

“Likely dead,” Riven said curtly.

My lips fell into a flat line. “No, they’re not.”

Neither Ansel nor Riven mustered up the energy to argue with me.

“You have lightning. Break the cuffs,” I urged. Had he forgotten his Nature?

Ansel shook his head. “They’re obsidian, coated with something I presume. I can’t use my Nature. Neither can you.”

A hollow feeling echoed through me. My Nature, the one I’d cursed myself for having for years, wasn’t there when I tried pulling it to the surface. It felt like the very lungs I needed to breathe had been ripped from me.

Pulling harder against the cuffs, I winced at the burn of my skin tearing.

“There’s no use,” Ansel mumbled.

I swallowed, trying to think.

The heavy door opened. A healer with a grey jacket and white gloves walked in. Behind him was a woman in a gold gown and a satin lined, bronze cloak.

Brown skin, caramel hair, and hawk-like eyes stood before me.

Queen Delaina herself.

I watched her from the table, eyes tracing her every move.

“I would’ve thought they’d clean you up a bit in Castivian,” she droned.

My face twisted. “Why do you care what I look like?”

She clasped her hands together and gave a half smile. “It’s just pathetic to see that Lord Ansel is with the filthy likes of you after making love to me. But… I suppose he is just a man, after all.”

Turning, she scowled at Ansel. “You left my chambers in the middle of the night like a common whore. Did you think I wasn’t aware of your wedding? And you actually thought it wise to bring your new bride back here?” She snorted. “Well, at least you’re pretty, Ansy.”

He refused to look at her, much less speak. I was speechless myself. I had no part in Ansel and Queen Delaina’s history. She’d just been married to my brother, for Fate’s sake.

She snapped her head back to me. “This isn’t about me and Ansel,” she said coldly. “It’s about you and your bastard brother.”

“Are you so offended by us,” I began, “that you would go against your late husband's wishes?”

She scoffed. “Clarke didn’t even know you. But I knew him,” she said, dragging her finger along the table. “I knew Clarke better than anyone, and let me assure you, I am not an idiot like him. You should’ve never been allowed to live to begin with. All of you Blackhearts. You’re vermin!”

The more Delaina talked, the angrier she became.

“You are the vermin,” I snarled. “Selling and murdering the Dark Natured like cattle.”

She slammed her hand on the table, barely missing my face. “Your kind hurts little girls! All of you Dark Natured blights are a plague that cause nothing but grief!” she yelled, voice cracking. There was a pain there, so deep that no light would ever find it.

I was quiet long enough to let the room go still.

“There are little girls in the Waywards, too.”