Page 124 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

L ilac stared up at the sky, blinking the stars and smoke into focus as her muscles seized against the ground.

Her lungs burned, and it was painful to breathe; scowling, she turned her head and spat into the dirt.

She could feel by the biting breeze at her feet and shoulder—despite the thick layer of soot that coated her skin—that part of the hem of her dress had been singed off.

She sobbed once and gritted her teeth against the tremendous ache that resonated throughout her body.

Miraculously, nothing felt raw; if she’d sustained burns anywhere on her legs as Garin had, the adrenaline was enough to dull the pain.

By the time she found the strength to try to sit up, Garin was crawling away from the spot where he’d landed beside her—back toward the flame-swallowed porch that was no longer.

He, too, was covered in soot, his shoes gone and one pant leg partially burned through, streaks of dark blood left in the dirt behind him.

“Garin,” she croaked as he pulled himself off the floor, cursing how convenient it would be to have even a smidgeon of the power he held over her.

She coughed and scanned the grass for any sign of the bow she’d flung aside.

“If you take one more step toward that house I’ll shoot you myself. Garin, I order you to stop!”

At that moment, Yanna rounded the corner of the house and took one look at him nearing the blazing porch. She exchanged a look of fury with Lilac before dropping her bow and quiver. “Not again,” Yanna growled, striding straight for him.

“Yanna, no!” Lilac pushed through the ache in her joints and had barely staggered to her feet when there was a gargled yelp.

Garin had his mouth to Yanna’s throat.

Lilac froze. An unruly, apple-green rage stuck like a stake into Lilac’s chest, nearly smothering her fear for Yanna’s life.

Nearly .

“Get off of her!” Lilac demanded, tugging Garin’s head away with a fistful of his hair, wrapping an arm around his chest. “Let her go, Garin, she’ll die!” Lilac pulled with all her might, but even with her thrall strength, it was no use.

He only grunted and shifted his grip.

“Help me.” Whimpering, Yanna bucked and cursed both Lilac and Garin—but he clung to her so tightly at the throat and around the waist that the veins in his forearms bulged. His breaths between gulps were so loud, Lilac could hear them over the roar of the fire and Yanna’s bellowed gasps.

She staggered back and swallowed, sick with a burning envy she couldn’t help. This was her friend. It was her friend— and she didn’t care .

Of course, Myrddin was nowhere to be found. His illusion of guards had disappeared along with him.

“Get—him— off ,” Yanna thundered, her voice furious as it was hitched. “Get your stupid, oversized leech off of me, or I’ll haunt your children’s children to the grave!”

The thought of Yanna’s body, limp in his arms, flashed through Lilac’s mind.

She ran her tongue across her lower lip.

Would it be so bad to let him have her? He was hungry, after all.

Whatever pleased him. It couldn’t be Lilac feeding him.

Not now. Not with the way he looked at her, touched her, craved her. He might?—

“ Lilac, please! ” Yanna’s pained sob pierced the night.

Blinking the vision away, Lilac dropped to her knees and frantically ran her fingers through the grass. Her knuckles brushed against a solid shaft; she grabbed it, leaped up, and slashed it hard under Garin’s shirt. It skidded along the skin of his back, just above his trousers .

Warmth pooled over her fingertips. Lilac clung to the arrow and scuttled back.

Garin released Yanna with a roar, blood dribbling down his front. It was everywhere. He began retching and coughing, confusion marring his anger while he spat what was left in his mouth into the dirt. He wiped at his red-stained chin and whipped around.

“ No .” Garin wiped his mouth, his ruddy, blown irises shrinking as they flew over her. “No, no, no?—”

“It wasn’t me,” she whispered, placing her hand on his cheek.

He slowly turned to Yanna, who stood there trembling. “I’m sorry. I?—”

A loud crack echoed across the fields, sending startled nightingales soaring into the sky before Yanna stomped off.

Garin’s hand went to his cheek where she’d slapped him. “She’s still bleeding,” he murmured when Lilac stumbled from his side, stalking toward Yanna.

What was wrong with her? She was so willing, more than willing, to sacrifice her handmaiden to him.

Her throat tightened, thinking of the two girls standing outside of Garin’s room at The Fool's Folly. How they’d sacrificed their friend to sate his hunger enough for him to want to bed them.

She’d been so fixated on her and Myrddin’s mission, fucking him seemed far from her thoughts until the moment she slit her though.

But now, it was more than envy. Something deep-seated—an arcane wrath that strained against any attempt to grasp at logic.

She slowed in the middle of the path, realizing her hands had been balled into fists.

“Let him heal you, Yanna,” Lilac managed, nauseous at the thought of his tongue on her.

“No,” Yanna screeched. “Stay the fuck away from me, the both of you!” She gathered her skirts into her fist. Holding the bunched outer hem of her gown against the wound at her throat, Yanna staggered toward the nearby pile of hay stacks that sat between Sable and Jeanare and the farmhouse.

Lilac turned back to urge Garin to help her, but he’d already left. His back was to her—he was approaching the porch again.

No, something in front of it.

He was so disfigured and crumpled, Lilac hadn’t noticed him there. Several feet away, Artus lay face-up, his charred lips gaping to swallow rattling breaths, his torso quaking but otherwise still.

“You.” Garin sank to his knees beside the old man, slipping his arms beneath his head and shifting him further away from the fire. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought Garin was attempting to save him.

The blaze before them burned brighter, the last of the west hall collapsing in on itself.

Lilac retreated and was forced to shield her eyes and face against the blast of heat, but Garin remained oblivious to the embers flung at them, his hands flying over the old man’s body.

He was searching him. Armand’s breast pocket, the leather pouch.

Then his trousers and even under his shirt.

“Where is it?” His snarl was barely audible, a treacherous sound ensnared in bile and venom.

He coughed and spat into the dirt beside Artus’s head.

“What have you done with it? Where is—” As if belatedly realizing Artus was incapable of answering even if he’d wanted to, Garin broke off and grabbed him.

He shook him violently by the shoulders, hard enough to bounce the back of Artus’s skull off the ground.

A heavy growl of frustration leaked from Garin’s lips as he dropped him, fingers curled. He hung his head, chest rising and falling in a scattered rhythm. Without warning, he brought a heavy fist down on Artus. Through his skull. Lilac jumped and covered her mouth.

He did it again, upon Artus’s chest. Then, into his ribcage.

Over and over and over again.

Lilac wanted to move. Her legs burned against her will, her fingers itching to slip down the front of her gown, but she couldn’t bring herself to do any of it.

She couldn’t divert her gaze or shut her eyes, or even retreat to prevent her feet from being further covered in the gore that splattered with every hit.

The raw agony with which Garin moved petrified Lilac.

There was nothing stealthy or lithe about him as he pummeled Artus’s remains into the earth.

He was the force of falling night in the flesh.

Lilac licked her lips, enchanted by the melodious sound of his fist squelching, shattering Artus’s bones.

“For this kingdom,” Garin grunted to the pulverized corpse between punches. “For my mother.” He lifted his fist high once more. “For the love — of my—life. ”

Before she knew it, her legs carried her forth. Reflexes steady, Lilac caught his wrist when it raised again.

Garin startled, face twisting up at her in anguish. Lilac couldn’t do anything but nod in silent reassurance, hot tears suddenly clinging to her lashes.

What was this overwhelming feeling that crested over her?

How had she swung from the violent urge to rip Yanna out of his arms, to picturing letting him have her friend until her heart stopped beating—to this?

It was more than sadness, more than the exhaustion of walking through flames to drag him out of his burning home.

It was loss—the four closed walls of a shrinking room. Regret and torture. She was so filled with grief, she couldn’t gauge the exact reasons for the weight behind it.

All she knew was that it was crushing, the pit in her stomach heavy and hollow at the same time.

It was as if she and Garin were tethered by barbed arrows on two ends of a taut chain. An unwavering connection. The more she recoiled, tried to pull away—the more viscerally it dug into her, bleeding her.

Lilac gripped his hand and closed her eyes, willing the sensation to pass.

Instead, grief barreled into her—a feeling she knew by name, but never before at this intensity.

It was an inhuman devastation that stole her breath: the farmhouse, mounds of blood-splattered snow, and all the could’ve-beens that had ever kept Garin up at night, soaked into her conscience.

She could taste it, his bittersweet, aged melancholia.

It was an ancient knowing; she felt memories she couldn’t see, loved people she’d never touched, and scorned those she’d never met.