Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I allow my claws to extend as I reach for Emil's face, resting them lightly against his jaw. "You betrayed me, Emil. How can I possibly decide which choice will bring you the pain you deserve?"

His hand tightens around the back of my neck, multiple sharp pricks of pain telling me that his own fingernails are sharpening—maybe into the claws of a wolf or the talons of a hawk.

When he speaks, his voice is broken. Disturbingly so.

"Betrayal is in my blood," he says. "It's a curse I can't escape."

"You lied to me," I snap back at him, fighting a new dread that's growing within me.

It's the growing fear that he will give up. That he won't fight for his life like I will fight for mine.

Because, for better or worse, his fate is entwined with mine.

"It's in my nature to lie." He nods. "The rules of my creation dictate that I cannot choose any other way."

No . He doesn't get to justify his actions because of what he is.

I fight the very real anger and pain rising within me. Fight to stay in control of these next few moments—moments that will determine my survival.

"You took the only precious thing I had." My voice chokes up at that declaration—a truth that's torn out of me—but I force myself to continue speaking. "You took away the only person who loved me. Then you made me believe she didn't love me after all."

A month ago, when I asked Emil if he'd tethered my mother's magic, he told me he hadn't. He allowed me to believe that the woman who had raised me had not been Galeia, my biological mother. He let me believe that Galeia had chosen to abandon me.

"No!" he snarls back at me.

His denial takes me by surprise, as does the sudden fury in his eyes.

"You leaped to that conclusion all on your own," he says.

My eyes widen, a new anger threatening to swamp me, but this time, I let it grow because it's cold and it will dampen my other, more vulnerable, emotions.

"You swore to me that you didn't tether my mother's magic." My voice is deep with rage. "You made me believe that Galeia left me to rot in darkness for twenty-three fucking years!"

"I didn't make you believe anything," Emil snaps. "Your own pain and fear led you to that belief."

"You let me believe it!" My hand tightens around his jaw, the tips of my claws dragging at his skin.

These black claws are practically indestructible.

They can cut through anything.

Dragon scales. Stone. Steel.

His flesh is no challenge.

His pupils dilate, but it can't be with fear. Emil has rarely shown fear.

At the appearance of my claws, my father starts to cackle. He probably thinks I'll lose control of my anger and drive my claws into Emil's chest after all.

He has remained looming a step behind Emil but is now standing farther to my left. It's a location that keeps him positioned steadfastly between me and the only way out. It also puts him closer to The Book of Dark Magic .

He smiles with apparent delight at our conflict.

I'm sure he's reveling in my pain, but while I keep him within my sights, my focus on Emil doesn't waver.

To Emil, I repeat my accusation, daring him to contradict me. "You allowed me to believe my mother had betrayed me."

Emil is like stone opposite me.

And then, instead of drawing away from me like I expect him to, he leans into my clawed hand as if I were cradling his face instead of threatening to rip him to shreds.

Pinpricks of blood form across his skin where the tips of my claws cut his cheek and jaw.

His eyes close and the breath whooshes audibly from his chest, an exhale that appears to sap everything from him.

"I did," he says quietly. "I let you believe it."

His shoulders slump even farther forward, his weight becoming so heavy against my hand that I'm forced to retract my claws before they tear down his cheek.

It's the only movement I can manage right now because his admission has frozen me to the spot and the speech has died in my throat.

I never expected him to agree with me, let alone without anger.

As I try to catch my breath, his shape changes again.

His dragon wings retract and his black scales peel away. His jaw becomes chiseled and his shoulders become impossibly broad.

His clothing transforms into a white tunic and pants, the sleeveless shirt revealing all the defined muscles of his biceps and forearms. The style of this clothing is similar to the training clothes we wore back on the island, but the weave of the material is much finer, shinier even, the kind that might be worn by a king.

A white belt rests around his waist with a silver buckle and a small sheath attached to it that could be intended to hold a weapon—except that it's empty.

At the same time, his hair slowly bleaches of color until its strands are like silver metal. They catch the rays of light magic glimmering around my father's hands, fracturing the magic in the same way that my heart is cracking, splintering it into rainbows around us.

Where Emil's face rests against my hand, his skin is unnaturally cold, an icy temperature that makes me want to withdraw.

He opens his eyes, and they are the color of the palest-green leaves.

Now, my breathing has stopped altogether because his face…

This unearthly, beautiful face…

It scares the fuck out of me.

"I chose to hurt you," he says in a soft murmur that feels as if it wraps around my chest. "That is the truth."

He was wearing this face when he warned me that The Book of Dark Magic would destroy me.

I asked him to stay with me. To stand with me. I promised him I wouldn't break. When he didn't believe me, I told him that nothing was impossible.

And now, he whispers the same question that he asked me before, his voice hollow. "Will you have your revenge, my Veda?"

Even now, he calls me his .

His Veda.

His conqueror .

I inhale what could be one of my last breaths, preparing to leap into the unknown, an abyss where the tiniest sliver of faith is all that could keep me alive.

It's a faith that doesn't belong to a dark creature like me. But still, I dare to reach for it.

I remain aware of my father, who has taken a small step farther to my left. His eyes narrow as he fixates on Emil's new form. There's a hint of wariness in my father's posture for the first time since he appeared in this room. The smallest indication of fear, as if something about Emil's face scares him, too.

I'm conscious of the keeper of light magic with her dazed eyes as she slumps against the far wall.

But most of all, I'm mindful of my left hand where it rests benignly on my lap, the claws on that hand completely retracted, the muscles of my left arm deceptively relaxed.

To Emil, I say, "My mother raised me to understand love. She taught me its value, even for a dark creature like me. I knew love for the first thirteen years of my life, but when she died, I lost it."

My jaw clenches and the claws of my right hand dig deeper into his skin.

I will him to hear the power in my words.

"And then I found it again," I say.

I found it in my new family. I found it in the loyalty and care of the shadow panthers who form my pack: Anarchy, Riot, Rumble, and Strife. They are dark elves, cursed to take the form of panthers for thousands of years until I freed them from their cage, after which the keeper broke their curse.

I found it in my half-brother, Lucian, who vowed to stand at my side, helped me start using my previously useless wings, and told me that I have what no other dark creature he has ever met has: an internal moral code all my own.

I especially found it in Emil.

In the way he brought Anarchy back from the dead when she had been badly injured. In the way he healed me after the last time I'd fought my father. And in the way he respected my body.

He slowly opens his eyes and now there's a slight crease in his forehead, a wary purse to his lips.

"You thought I would break when I read The Book of Dark Magic ," I say, nodding softly to him. "And for a moment, I did. But this book gave me a gift. It restored the truth of my memories. And I am stronger for it."

As I speak, I reach for that tiny kernel of faith, of belief, that I am worthy of more than darkness and pain.

"I am not broken." I return Emil's gaze, daring to meet his pale green eyes, which are like coils of rope winding around my soul, binding me to him.

His weight against my hand eases, less heavy, more in control, a small sign of his returning strength as his gaze burns into me.

My father, on the other hand, is now poised nearby, his forehead deeply creased and an alarmed expression spreading quickly across his face.

His focus flicks urgently to the book lying close to my side, and I can see him calculating how fast he can get to it.

As much as he wants me dead, his first priority will be retrieving the book. It's everything to him.

I have only seconds to act.

I lean closer to Emil, certain now that his power has returned enough for him to fight back.

Pressing my forehead to his, I say, "My fate is in your hands now, Enemy."

And with that, I extend the claws of my left hand in a flash and drive them down.