Page 89

MARA

W ith horror-filled eyes, I watched the white of my father’s dress shirt turn as crimson as his tie. “Dad?” Languidly, he tipped his chin to his chest and gazed upon himself.

“You were always so weak. Never able to do what was necessary…”

I knew that voice. A voice that haunted my nightmares and turned my blood into shards of ice that sliced my veins from the inside. I whipped around, tasting bile as I said her name. “Belinda.”

God, she was beautiful. If Raúl was expertly aged wine, then my stepmother was nothing but long lines of refined crystal.

Blonde hair that remained coiled tight on her head in a bun with not a single hair out of place.

Piercing blue eyes so deep, I now knew they rivaled the ocean.

Expertly cut long jawline, long neck, long torso, long legs. She was all length and crisp and fresh.

But she had turned herself into a widow…a black one.

My gun sat in her hand, a curl of wispy white smoke coming off from the barrel and the pungent bitter smell of gunpowder hanging in the air.

And it was pointed right at my father. My brain was sluggish to understand—perhaps too afraid to accept the truth—but it finally did when I heard a soft thud and plop.

I spun around, finding my father slumped back in his chair, gripping his chest with ragged breaths.

“Dad!” I dropped the tablet, rushing around the desk and placing my hands over his wound. “Oh my god,” I muttered, feeling a fresh wave of grief overwhelming me. He shuddered against me, lifting a hand to my cheek.

“I’m sorry, Mara. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you better.”

I blinked back tears, feeling horror clamp down on me like a vice. “No, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay,” I blubbered. But it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. It was never going to be okay .

He took a ragged breath. “I loved you from the beginning. Remember that…”

I felt the second his body stilled. The moment his chest froze and his heart stopped thudding under my hand.

“Aww…such a pity.” Belinda’s tone couldn’t have been more caustic.

Stifling the desire to sob, I slowly stood up straight and faced her. “How could you?” My mind ached from it all. I just didn’t understand. Why would she—

“How could I what? Kill him?” She laughed, stepping to the side, inching her way gracefully around the room as my 9mm remained trained on me.

“Does it really come as such a surprise? Come now, dear…you had to have known that there was no love between the two of us. He was a forced marriage on me, one conceived through the imagination of my idiot father.” Her eyes grew cold then. “But I never loved him.”

Eyes fixed on Belinda, I rotated as she circled the room, feeling my shock simmer into trickles of anger as she spoke.

“ It’s a good match , he said. He’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted ,” she continued in a mocking tone.

“ He’ll bring us greatness .” She slowed, saying the last word through gritted teeth and narrowed eyes.

Standing now only two yards away from my father as her chin tipped to her chest and she glared.

“Except he didn’t, did he? He failed to give us an empire…

failed to retain control of the situation,” she spat out before narrowing her eyes on me once more.

“He failed to remain loyal , and then he killed my only son.”

My entire body quaked with rage as I listened to her.

Was it possible that my father was a pawn, just as I had been?

He made terrible choices, that was true, but so did I.

Not because I wanted to do terrible things, but because I was only ever given half-truths that led me to desperate choices. Was it…was it possible?

I glanced down at my tab and watched the digital red numbers gleam back up at me, ticking away the time. The scent of smoke wafted, tickling my nose, ever so faint. “Telvia has thirty minutes to surrender or the entire city will be burned to the ground. It’s over .”

Two emotions whipped through her, one after the other. The first was shock—lips parting, eyes widening and revealing the impossible purity of her blue eyes. Then her gaze narrowed once again, lips curling into a sneer that would have sent me running away as fast as I could as a little girl.

But I refused to run.

I was tired of running.

I was tired of letting my own fears and insecurities get the best of me.

That version of me died a long time ago.

She fractured and bled and shattered into a million pieces of brokenness, scattered across the sea.

Drowned as they drifted into the depths of the ocean to reside among the crustaceans and corals of a world lost to man.

I was tired of being scared. I was tired of being trapped and bound by my own doubts and self-loathing.

That version of me died…and then she was reborn.

I met her gaze head on, clenching my jaw and curling my hands into fists.

She shook her head, anger and hate and desperation mixing into an ugly display as it contorted her beautiful face. “I would rather see this world burn than surrender it. ”

“Then you condemn yourself to the same fate,” I spewed back at her.

“So be it.”

I shook my head, my own anger bubbling into rage. “Is your pride so big that you would let it destroy everything ? Even yourself ?”

She cackled. Never losing her sight of me, she tipped her head back and laughed—a beautifully toxic sound hinged on the border of madness. “Pride is all I have left, dear Mara. It’s all I ever had when the world stripped me of everything else.”

She was crazy. Belinda had lost her mind.

Her face maddened once more. “You have been a thorn in my side ever since you were born. You and your stupid mother.” Her nose wrinkled, as though the very word tasted bitter and poisonous on her tongue.

“Nora stole everything from me. Because of who she was, she would have taken it all and left me with nothing !”

What was she talking about? “You’ve lost it,” I muttered. “You’ve truly gone mad—”

Belinda shrieked. It was a guttural sound of anger and frustration, and if it weren’t for the fact that she was still holding the gun, I thought she would have shoved her hands into her luscious locks and torn them all out.

“You stupid, stupid girl! You ignorant little homewrecking twit !” Her rage was palpable—a suffocating slime that coated the air.

“You know absolutely nothing . Even after all this time, they’ve kept you in the dark.

” She gave a sardonic chuckle, bordering on the sounds of insanity.

“How blissfully perfect that you would understand none of it.” She shook her head delicately.

“No matter. It changes nothing.” Her gaze darted to the right. “Bring him in.”

What?

I spun around to face the door behind me and my stomach dipped in despair.

No. Oh god, please no…

Two guards marched in—one on either side of their prisoner—shoving the man forward as small wisps of smoke began to curl into the room through the doorway, rising to the ceiling. The three circled around me, giving me a wide berth, until they came to stand just in front of the fireplace.

His face was cut and bruised. His jumpsuit torn, revealing mottled, bloodied flesh, and he had clearly been stripped of all his weapons. But he moved and he breathed and he lifted his gaze, ensnaring my own as those hazel eyes had always done from the very beginning of it all.

“Wes,” I uttered.

Everything in me grew cold as I realized the gravity of my situation.

“Yes,” Belinda cooed. “Wes Calvernon, the last heir to the Northern throne. Mr. Fisher has been a most useful ally.”

Oh my god. It was Fisher? Of all the people, the man who seemed so spineless and frail…Fisher? My heart thundered in my chest. “He was—”

“The traitor in your midst? He most certainly was. Bought and paid for once we discovered you were hiding in the North. And he was most useful in helping us understand what Charles was planning.” She laughed again, a supple smooth sound unlike the cackles of earlier.

“Too bad for you, Mara, that it’ll never come to fruition.

” She motioned the gun between Wes and me.

“A match between you and a Northern son was incredibly wise of Nora, though I suppose I’ll never know if she knew what she was doing. ”

I shrieked, my rage rolling over. “ Why! What the fuck is your problem!” They weren’t even real questions anymore because I truly didn’t care. Belinda had lost her mind, and because of her own damn fucking pride, we were all going to die!

“ You! ” she screamed back at me, pointing the gun in my direction once more.

“You and everything about you ! You and your stupid mother! Because of you, I’ve lost everything !

” Her eyes glistened, catching the light.

“I lost my titles. I lost my chance at love. I lost my baby. I lost my son. I lost everything !” she screamed that last word at me—a high pitched shrill cry of hurt and frustration.

“All of it gone because of your stupid fucking mother. And then there was you ! The heir to everything ! Matched to the son of the most powerful region of the damn UFA. But it should have been mine! All of it should have been mine !”

What was she talking about? Only half of what she said made sense, and the rest was utter nonsense. But there was no time to even question her because she just kept going, like a tornado consuming everything in its path, stopping for no one.

“But none of it matters anymore, does it? Because we’re all going to die, anyway. We’re all going to burn, just like his stupid brother burned in that arena. We’ll all be cleansed as we descend into the pits of hell!”

My vision blurred as tears consumed my sight. “It doesn’t have to be this way—”

BANG!

I jerked backward, stumbling as my thigh screamed out in pain.

“MARA!” Hearing Wes’s roar—the anguish that laced each syllable—it was more painful than the gunshot wound in my shoulder and now throbbing in my left leg.

My hands gripped the muscle of my thigh, just below Glory, feeling the wound throb.

It sent claws of vicious agony up my limb and into my gut.

The pain alone caused me to retch, but I muscled my nausea into control as I looked up at Wes, watching him struggle against the two men that held him captive.

“ Please ,” Belinda drawled with a tone dripping with disdain.

“Your love fetish is sickening.” I panted as pain caused each breath to come in quick shallow spurts, but I kept my gaze on my stepmother as she walked toward Wes.

“The only benefit of losing everything is that you don’t care anymore.

When you have nothing to lose, then you lose nothing at all. It’s depressingly poetic, isn’t it?”

She held the gun down lazily at her side, a coy smile curling on her lips. She’d shot me in the leg, rendering me fairly immobile, and she clearly didn’t see me as a threat. Not anymore, at least .

“But you still have something to lose, Mara. One last thing. And I get to enjoy the look on your face”—she lifted the gun once more, pointing it at Wes—“as you watch him die.”