Page 23 of Till Death

He’d been an unbearable father, unwavering in harsh lessons and cruel words. But I was born from love. He had the capacity. And in his own way, he’d shaped me into a warrior. A woman who could and would defend herself in a cutthroat world where no one would hold my hand. No one would fight alongside me, and he’d made sure I’d survive it. I was never going to be his heir, but I was still his. He was a product of an environment that would have devoured him had he been any other way. And he was my father.

Gripping the knife, I stalked up the aisle, letting the tears fall freely. “Please don’t do this,” I begged, the first words I’d spoken to Death in ages.

His eyes glimmered with malice. How could they not see him for the beautiful monster he was? How could they still consider him a savior when their skin turned to ice with fear?

Regulas finally emerged from behind a pillar in the back of the room. It could have been his name. It should have been, for all the hatred and evil he’d injected into the relationship between my father and me. Pulling a sword, he meant to intervene.

“Guards!” he shouted, speaking for my motionless father. “Protect your king.”

None moved. None were willing to step into Death’s path.

“Please,” I whispered, though I knew the crowd nor the gods that had left this world to destroy itself would not hear me. “I am not this.”

Standing between my father and me, Regulas held a trembling sword across his body, loyal to the very end. Magic seared across my mind, enveloping me in visions of my own father’s death. Slitting his throat was last in line. I saw his head fall to the marble floor. I saw my own hands reach into his severed belly, ripping him to shreds. I watched myself slaughter a man I’d loathed for so long, yet still did not wish to end.

Fighting the magic until pain ripped through my body, I blinked away tears, glancing over my shoulder, beyond Death to stare into Orin’s piercing gaze.

“I hate you!” I screamed, shoving Regulas to the side and whipping Chaos across my father’s throat.

Chapter 11

The eruption of hysteria behind me alluded to Death’s dramatic departure. He’d let everyone watch as he coaxed my father’s soul from his fallen body while the powerful magic, stronger from his close proximity, no doubt, receded, leaving me in a state of shock, exhaustion, and suffocating numbness.

Somewhere in the commotion, my unfortunate betrothed had ordered my capture. The hurried noise of people scrambling was drowned out by the buzzing in my ears. I willed my legs to move, but they did not obey.

The guards, those dressed in purple and the ones in green, closed in, but I had no fire. Even when I could hear Ro in my mind, screaming for me to fight, to rise. To run. Nothing worked. Not until a solid shoulder collided with my stomach, my feet left the ground, and I was hauled out of the temple like a rag doll.

“So help me gods, if you don’t put me down?—”

“Yes, I know. Threats and violence and long-drawn-out murders. Be silent. You lost, Maiden.”

Orin.

I landed a well-placed punch to his kidney, and he winced with a shout before overcorrecting and falling to the pebbled earth. Guards and courtesans and their bonded spouses poured from the temple behind us.

Orin jumped to his feet, lunging for me with far more grace than he’d had last night and no limp in his left leg. Fucking liar all the way around.

“Keep your hands off me!” I screamed as he snatched me around my hips from behind.

I cracked an elbow into his face, but he didn’t budge. The guards were closer now, and I’d never be able to fight them all. He leaned back, lifting me from the ground as he tried to run, but I wouldn’t be taken prisoner. I kicked and flailed, fighting like a wild animal, until his grip slipped, and he dropped me.

“I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry about this… Wife.” The final word dripped from his hateful mouth like poison as he struck me solidly in the back of the head with the hilt of a sword. I hadn’t even seen it coming.

“I’ve never known anyone to sleep ugly.”

Deep, resounding echoes of pain ricocheted off the walls of my throbbing mind as the blurry world righted itself. A surge of fury washed over me, amplifying the disorientation caused by the unfamiliar space.

Orin Faber leaned against a dusty dresser across a foreign bedroom, with his arms folded over his chest, glaring at me as if I’d been the one to ruin his life.

“Go fuck yourself,” I groaned, untangling my feet from the lacy edges of my tattered wedding gown so I could stand, though the world tipped, and an ache raced down my spine.

“Steady there, King Slayer. I’ve never been good with poisons.”

I grabbed my stomach to keep from hurling as the room spun. Poison… I should have known. “I’ve been taking heavy doses of poison to build a tolerance since I was fourteen,” I slurred. “You’ll have to try better than that.”

Three of him now stood where one did moments ago. I blinked, willing my vision to right itself.

“Looks like it.” He flipped a knife in his hands, the familiar ruby drawing my attention, even while battling poison. My blade. Chaos.