Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111353 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
“Oh, absolutely,” she replied without hint of hesitation. “But anyone paying attention can see how obsessed with you Ronin is. He fobbed off all five of our marriage proposals for decades, but you...?” Raven whistled. “If you asked him, he’d marry you tomorrow.”
I hated myself. Because even then, hearing those words made me flush.
“This rift between the two of you works out for me just fine. Now there’s no chance that you are using this alliance to unseat our fathers, consume our Houses, and then slaughter the five of us so that you can have Ronin all to yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get serious, woman. I wouldn’t do that even if Ronin hadn’t crushed any chance of us being together beneath his boot.”
“Ugh, mortals.” Can you believe she actually sounded fed up with me, and my refusal to consider assassination and world domination? “It’s amazing you live past a day.”
“I’m serious, Zuriel.” I looked past her to the door of my and Dora’s room. I hadn’t set foot in there in over two weeks. I just couldn’t. “What do you expect me to do now?”
“Simple.” She was grinning as she stood up, standing between me and my bittersweet memories. “I expect you to make them feel your wrath.”
I said nothing for so long, she turned to leave.
“Wait,” I rasped as her hand closed over the knob. “If you really meant all that, and you want to see some real wrath...” I peered at her through my lashes. “Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?”
A smirk as terrible as it was wicked stretched her lips. “For revenge’s sake? Always.”
RONIN
“Why the fuck are you in my room again?” Tristan growled.
“Listen.”
“Fucking hell, what will it take to keep you out?”
“Will you shut up! You’re missing it!” I shoved the mirror in his face.
Charlotte’s voice filled the room. “If you really meant all that, and you want to see some real wrath... Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?”
Tristan’s jaw slackened. He was wearing clothes—shirt and pants—for fucking once, but they were pajamas because it was two in the morning. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, oh, shit!” I paced the length of the room, pleased for once that it wasn’t overrun with a dozen panting wolves reeking of sweat and fleas.
That is, of course, because I snapped them all out of the room the second I stepped inside of it—which set the furry fuck off complaining again. I swore, how Charlotte could stand his nonstop whining, I’d never know.
“What does this mean?”
Tristan flashed me a look over the mirror’s frame. “Seriously, Belphe, don’t pretend like you need me to be your mortal whisperer. You know exactly what Charlotte means. You know exactly what you’ve done.”
I roared up on him, snarl bleeding from my lips—
—and dropped to my knees. “I know. Oh, fuck, I know what I’ve d-done.” I clutched my head, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes. “But, gods, what do I do? Everything I did was to protect Charlotte, but she can’t even look at me now. She shaved off her hair because I touched it!” I choked—the band wrenched around my chest squeezing tighter. “Fuck. What do I do?”
“Whoa, man...” There was a thump from the oversized fat-ass dropping down in front of me. “Are you like... crying?” Tristan seized my hair and yanked me up, confirming it with his own eyes. “Ugh. Pathetic.”
Wham!
I socked him right in the mouth, tearstained fist and all.
“Ow.” Tristan cracked his jaw, wincing. He spat a glob of blood at my feet. “But I’ll give you that one. I deserved it.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” I didn’t recognize the wretched, pitiful sound coming from my throat. “All I wanted was to have her. To own her and keep her and fuck her and tempt a god into giving me a womb so I could have her half-bred babies.”
“Yikes.”
“But now it’s all so fucked up.” Visions of a wild-eyed Charlotte slicing her lips haunted my mind... but not as screamingly loud as her declaring that she’d never love me. “What am I supposed to do? All these weird thoughts keep going through my head, and I’m feeling all this stuff I don’t understand.
“Like, when she cries, I don’t want to point and laugh or hit her with something heavy, I just keep wanting to hold her in my arms as I set fire to any and everything that’s stolen her smile. And once when she was walking through the halls, that shit Dirk stuck out his foot and tried to trip her, and I ripped it off his leg and stuffed it in his mouth so fast, she didn’t even know what happened by the time he started screaming. But when my favorite nanny unknowingly walked backward off a cliff and fell into a lake of lava, all I did was laugh my ass off.”