Page 150 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

T he shouting beyond the walls sounded throughout the chapel, a persistent reminder of the cost of her own selfish cause. Lilac couldn’t tell whether they were winning or losing. Garin’s face remained stoic as he listened, his eyes glazed over.

It was a solemn and quick affair. There was no ceremony for the crowning.

No row of bishops to kiss her hand or congratulate her.

No cardinal to bless her. Only the hanging silence of a chapel filled with strained reverence, and her aching knowledge that every step forward, for herself or her kingdom, had come at a price.

Father Guillaume and Henri stood on the step above her.

The crown loomed, heavy and foreboding, lowering onto her head like a chain clasped shut. And still, she remained standing.

Lilac didn’t falter, nor faint. The applause through the room was quiet, as if everyone felt her heart breaking.

No one realized Garin’s hunger until it was too late.

His hand trembled, and he stared down at it, confused. Then, his arm lifted—and he reached for her. She thought he would caress her face, but he kept going… and gently lifted the crown from her head.

He was merely shaken. Lilac hushed everyone who made a disapproving comment and extended a hand to him—to her crown—but he jerked his shoulders back, just out of reach.

“Garin?”

“ No ,” Garin hissed, curling into himself, staggering away as if her touch would burn him. He dropped the circlet, which clattered against the chapel stones. “It’s the hunger. Kestrel’s deal?—”

He snarled, clawing at his head.

Dread tore through her. She yearned to help him, to calm him, but every part of her screamed to run. “But the chest was delivered!” Lilac stepped forward, pale in the sputtering torchlight. “Garin, talk to me—please.”

Everyone shot from their seats and began backing away, freezing when Garin’s head popped back up, tracking their movement.

He shrank away from them. “Bast,” Garin croaked, low and deep. “The chest.”

“We—we sent it off in the faerie fire,” Bastion said, fingers twitching toward the blade at his side. “I swear.”

“We did,” Piper cried. “It vanished like you said it would!”

Henri and Father Guillaume stumbled back toward the altar, while Marguerite was already halfway up the organ’s woodwork, skirts hiked, hair wild.

Garin snapped his head up at her, and his eyes were no longer human. Deep crimson bled into them, twin pools of bloodshot hunger. His fangs split his mouth in a snarl too wide, too ravenous to resemble anything human at all.

Yanna and Isabel surged forward, but he turned and growled , a deep, guttural sound born of curses and carrion, and it rooted them in place. “Help her,” he said in a voice no longer his own, “and you will be slain.”

“Get back!” Lilac shouted, throwing a hand toward the doors. “Leave us! Go!”

The human attendants needed no convincing, and fled toward the corridors and courtyard. But then, the castle groaned, rooting them in place. Low at first, like something ancient stirring in its sleep.

Then a rumble . Dust sifted from the rafters. Cracks spider-webbed across the chapel’s eastern wall, toward the back facing the courtyard.

A section of the wall exploded inward. No screaming or artillery could be heard—just the sound of the world crumbling. Stone shattered, just when a large wave surged across the flagstones, toward the pews.

Garin stiffened as Lilac shielded herself, the stench of sea filling the chapel and mingling with the heady incense.

Wind howled through the breach, thick with the reek of brine and rot—and through it stepped a tall figure with billowing, unbound hair. She was wet and naked, her lower half below her navel sinewed with pale-green skin wrapped in opalescent scales that shone purple and green.

She was laughing, the sound a nightmarish tide—and in a dripping, clawed hand, she held a shuddering mess of hair and coral, limping, straining to walk alongside her.

The Bugul Noz.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he was whimpering, voice paced with pain. “I—I won’t do it again.”

“Well,” she purred, ignoring the creature, her melodic intonation catching Garin’s attention. “You’ve all made such a mess.”

She flung the Bugul Noz aside, and he hit one of the pews with a sodden thud, sliding to the floor, crumpled and twitching.

Garin turned to look over his shoulder, his garnet eyes disinterestedly catching the sea witch’s gaze before returning to her—but Lilac was already moving, driven by something deeper than instinct.

Her blood sang, her thrall’s strength surging through her veins.

If Garin was made stronger, faster—hungrier—through the curse of Kestrel’s deal…

then so was she. Her limbs were not her own.

The bond between her and Garin—the magic that chained her soul to his appetite—snapped taut like a wire and pulled.

Lilac ran, faster than human feet could ever carry her. She ran toward the outdoor opening just past the sea witch, but the bitch put her hand out, teal claws inches from her face as Lilac skidded to a stop.

“I don’t think so. Your owner’s that way, mutt.”

Lilac snarled and careened right, tripped over the old candelabra sitting in the corner and vaulted, slamming against the choir loft. Pain lanced up her side, but she climbed, feral and unthinking, her fingernails scraping, gouging into the brittle wood.

She was no longer herself. She hadn’t been in a long time, not fully. This was a taste of it. This was what it was to let hunger drive her .

The thrall in her—whatever fragment of Garin’s cursed blood burned up inside her—dragged her up the beams like a creature born to fight and flee. She scrambled higher, effortless and sobbing, eyes wild, until she reached the rafters above the altar.

Garin snarled below, eyes locked on Lilac, his claws flexing. Bastion, lurking in the pews, suddenly launched himself toward him—but he was caught midair and flown backwards toward the altar, landing at Yanna and Isabel’s feet.

A thick wooden pole from the chapel rubble was embedded in his chest, blood leaking from his mouth. Piper grabbed him, dragged him up the stairs to the front of chapel where everyone else cowered, and yanked it out.

In the wreckage of the wall and courtyard, the sea witch watched the chaos unfold, dusting her hands, eyes half-lidded and amused. She strode forth slowly as water lapped at her heels. “Oh, my darling,” she cooed to Garin. “Albrecht, was it?”

“Garin,” he managed distractedly, blinking up at the queen.

Flames of green jealousy ignited in Lilac’s chest.

But by the time the sea witch spoke again, the hunger had consumed his expression once again. “Morwenn. Pleasure.” She tutted, studying him unabashedly. “A Strigoi , in the flesh. I was not expecting this—expecting you. My, you really do ruin everything you touch.”

Lilac crawled forth, snarling down, her own blunt teeth bared. “Leave him alo?—”

She’d slipped.

Lilac caught herself, clinging to the beam, breath ragged and limbs aching.

Dust and old incense thickened the air as she hung above the altar, the chapel yawning beneath her.

She swung a leg to pull herself up, but the wood began to splinter under her bare hands; she cussed, shifting her grasp, when an old, rusted nail slashed her wrist.

She winced and forced herself to look down, warm splatters of her blood hitting her cheek.

Garin stood motionless below, positioning himself, letting the drops stain his face. His claws flexed at his sides; horrified, Lilac glimpsed the struggle in him, the fraying edge where his mind ended and the monster began in watching her fight for her life .

He closed his eyes for a moment, and dragged his hand across his cheek, slipping his fingers into his mouth.

Garin moaned, a sound of desperate ecstasy.

Morwenn stepped lightly over the rubble, following him.

“Are you truly going to let her hide from you like that? Strong Strigoi like you, what a shame. Your beautiful little thrall, all tangled up in borrowed strength and fear?” She turned up at Lilac and smiled with snide amusement.

“You can run, girl, but you won’t get far from what’s already been inside you. ”

Garin’s breath caught. Lilac saw it in his face, his smoldering decision. She swung her leg again, catching it on the rafter, finally hoisting herself up.

And then—he leapt.

With a growl, Garin kicked off from a toppled pew, his claws sinking into the stone pillars.

He climbed expertly up the height of the chapel wall.

Each movement was smooth and utterly silent, save the groaning wood under his weight once he reached the rafters in front of Lilac in a matter of seconds.

Henri was shouting. Marguerite’s cries echoed through the broken chapel.

Lilac skittered backward along the rafter beam, heart thundering.

Garin perched like a gargoyle, red eyes burning.

She hissed like an animal in warning. “Don’t come closer.”

“I cannot stop myself,” he said softly. “Stop running.”

Her fingers were so sweaty and slicked in blood, they would’ve slipped from the wood behind her if not for her thrall strength. “You have to fight it, Garin.”

“Listen to me,” he said, and she wondered which part of him was speaking. “I want you. I need to chase you. If you stop—if you let me reach you—there will be nothing left of me to hold back until you are finished.”

“Then why would I stop running?” she snarled.

“Because,” he said, rising to his feet with perfect balance. “You can fight .”

Lilac was on her feet in a flash, wobbling violently, using her arms to steady herself. In one swift motion, she unsheathed the Dawnshard and slashed at him from a distance, almost willing the blade to open.

“That won’t do anything,” he rasped. “It won’t kill me. ”

“I’m not trying to kill you.” Lilac stepped forward, slashing again; Garin’s hungry gaze only grew more amused, more terrible.

“You have to.”