Page 36 of Vicious Princess (The Trials of Death and Honor #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

D arkness swallows me whole.

No bed. No warmth. No light.

I sit. I wait.

First, I count heartbeats.

Then breaths.

Then hours.

Then nothing.

My skin itches like it’s trying to peel itself off. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood just to feel something.

Silence settles like dust on my chest.

And then they come.

Not Ezkai Gavriel. Not the Order.

Them.

Dad’s face, slack in death. Blood spreading across his tunic like spilled wine. A blade in my hand.

My sisters scream as the blade I hold goes in.

Their eyes are wide. Not with pain—with confusion.

Why didn’t you save us? Why did you let us die?

I clutch my ears. It doesn’t help. They’re inside my head, louder than the dark.

I close my eyes. As if that makes a difference.

The red haze. The sickly smell of charred wood and flesh.

I scream until my throat shreds. Until my voice is gone and all that’s left is breathless rage.

Darkness swallows me whole.

I’m the daughter of no one.

A ghost in a foreign land that wants nothing to do with me.

You chose this , I tell myself. You came here.

Not for glory. Not for honor.

Vengeance.

The silence presses closer. The pressure is too much. There’s not enough oxygen in my lungs.

I curl against the wall, bones digging into stone, eyes wide in the black.

Ezkai Gavriel thinks this will break me.

But you can’t break what’s already broken.