Page 71 of The Dread Prince (The Dread Descendant #2)

If you won’t save her, please take her from me. Drive her far from this evil that haunts me. I cannot live knowing she will come to hate me. I cannot die, for this plague is eternal, everlasting in its insatiable need for my blood. Golden blood she has not, and the shadow wants her, despite my pleadings for her life to be spared.

I have given it all. My mind. My body. My very soul.

And now the boy.

My boy.

I am going mad with the knowledge the prophecy is not fulfilled until our Magic is one. The shadow of my mind craves him more than she ever craved me. He is far from Castle Morana and I pray he never returns.

I will deny Maeve her motherhood if he is kept secret from this darkness. My own heart aches at the lack of his smile.

There is Magic in the Greywood that I cannot grasp. The Dark Peaks now wrap The Dread Lands, when I swear there was once something beyond. Magic is so very deceitful in the Greywood. I think I have found it, mastered this unknown call of Magic, but I never do.

Something tells me there is more to these lands. More beyond the endless Greywood I wander through.

Someone who could protect my Little Viper and my even smaller viper too.

The shadow does not want my Little Viper to be mine. She thirsts for a crown of her own. A queen, she says she will be.

I never wanted a crown.

If one thing in my life I did desire, it was only her. To breathe her air was satisfactory.

I must make her run. I must make her dare to disobey the call of Magic between us. Her fear and hatred will be a welcome alternative for death.

Even now I feel the shadow’s breath upon my neck, and I will be punished for my unfaithful writing.

Deliver Maeve from this hell. I beg, I beg, I beg.

The Dream is not dead. . .it has been buried alive.

Please, I beg…

I beg…