CHAPTER 136: ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY SIX

Valka

Stone streaks past beneath my feet, my arm wrenched painfully in Rafael’s grip. My body feels both weightless and unbearably heavy, eyes raw from smoke and dust, throat stinging as the wound tries and fails to close.

"Keep moving," he hisses, shoving me forward. His voice is ragged, his control slipping. The air trembles with shouts, the clash of steel, the thunder of boots.

Something detonates behind us, another explosion, this time a raging battle cry of men, and Rafael jerks us back as a legion bursts through the doors ahead.

A familiar dark haired male stands at the forefront and his equally dark eyes land on me in a second and widen. But the men behind us rush forward, cutting off Trenton’s path to me as Rafael swerves left, tugging me down a flight of steps that coughed dust from the scones. "Do not let them through," he hisses at his men.

"Where are you taking me?"

The farther we go, the more the castle becomes a maze of broken doors and fallen banners. His steps are sure, like he’s mapped this out so many times, he knows it even in the dark. "The old throne room has an exit that leads outside the castle. With this much chaos, it’s as good a time as any to get out."

My fingers are slick against the walls as I struggle to keep my balance. I taste metal on my tongue. My left hand throbs under the bandage. My fingers fumble uselessly at the cloth. I’m so exhausted. Why am I so exhausted? "And for how long will you keep fleeing? This is getting tiring--"

The pommel of his sword rams into the back of my skull thickly, sending me rolling down the steps. The edge of stone concrete slams into my rib and spine and I gasp as black splotches in my vision.

His boots coated in soot come slamming down and I shield my stomach from the onslaught of his legs kicking over and over, haphazardly at the general direction of my ribs and stomach. "This is your fault," he begins mumbling and soon, they become ragged, frustrated yells. "This is all your fault!"

When I realize there will be no end to the volley of attacks, because he has well and truly lost it, I risk a hand forward, grabbing his ankle when the next kick comes and with enough force to snap my wrist, I trip him.

He collides with the ground in a thud. I lunge for the fallen sword, my hands barely grasping the hilt before he kicks it far out of my reach and grabs me off the ground. I shriek, kicking, and using the wall, I propel us both backwards, sending us both rolling down the rest of the stone stairs with Rafael taking the brunt of the fall.

I hope he would crack his spine, but the Goddess loves her favourites, because all it does is worsen his temper. His snarl reverberates off the walls, but I’m up and racing for the throne room in a blind dash.

There is no outrunning him in this state, but finding a weapon could make a difference. No matter how little. I am back to the way I’d felt in the training camps. Can’t use my powers. Can’t use the speed that comes from being Lycan. I might as well be a runt right now. Still, take my strength, he might, but I’ve been a fighter for far longer than he was born.

I will make a stand here. My stand.

The old throne room yawns before me in fractured moonlight, half-collapsed from disuse, pillars cracked, tapestries rotting where they hang. A golden throne sits solely on the dais, the only clean furniture and I see from the papers scattered across the floors, the fresh scent of ink, parchment and blood, the recent trail of footsteps in the dust leading up to the dais that this must be where Rafael spends most of his time when he isn’t in court or tormenting me.A golden throne sits solely on the dais, the only clean furniture and I see from the papers scattered across the floors, the fresh scent of ink, parchment and blood, the recent trail of footsteps in the dust leading up to the dais that this must be where Rafael spends most of his time when he isn’t in court or tormenting me.

My breath rasps. My vision sways. But I keep moving, stumbling toward anything I can use. A splintered length of wood lies near a broken table in the distance, jagged on one end, heavy enough to bruise, sharp enough to stake if driven hard enough.

I grab it.

Behind me, his footsteps thunder past the threshold. "Do not make this any harder than it has to be, Valka."

I whirl, holding it out in front of me in the same way I would a sword.

Rafael stops a few feet away. His gaze flicks to the jagged piece in my grasp. A slow, amused exhale leaves his lips as he lifts one brow, almost pitying. "And that is supposed to stop me?"

My grip tightens on the wood and my pathetic attempt at widening my stance results in making me sway. "Come closer and find out."

He does. Just one step. "You can’t even hold your own weight properly, much less hold your own against me. Not anymore." Another step. Slow. Confident. He lifts his hand and begins to roll up his sleeves, exposing the tanned skin of his forearms in the way a butcher prepares to work.

"Every pitcher of water you drank," he murmurs. "Every morsel of food you ate. Every time they dabbed powder on your face and color on your lips." His eyes drag over me with vile satisfaction. "Large, odorless doses. Never little. I poisoned you, Valka. Day after day. Breath after breath. If your will was all that kept you from breaking, I made certain you had no strength left to enforce it. And even if, by some miracle, you escaped me, it would take years before you could lift a sword again." He gestures dismissively. "Longer still before you reconnect to your Lycan. Assuming it even survives the strain."

He takes one final step, placing us on even grounding, and his smile is nothing short of evil. "Tonight’s dose was particularly large. In a few minutes, you will begin to thirst. And your limbs will fail you. In the long run, the consequences mightn’t be so dire. Not fatally, no. Not on you, anyway."

My breath catches as he adds, "But I can’t say the same for the child inside you." A beat. "It’s a Lycan, after all. And you’ve had... quite a lot of silver."

He watches my face, hungry for the moment I understand. And when I do, something splinter inside my chest.

He was never going to let me have the child.

My breath escapes me in a strange, wounded sound. Something raw. Something old. And I realize...

I’m laughing.

It spills out of me in a cracked, feral sound that doesn’t feel human. I don’t think I am human right now. I don’t think I am anything but the ache in my bones and the ringing in my skull and the animal instinct screaming fight.

He hesitates. He sees it too. Something is wrong with me. No. For the first time in so long, something is right with me. And I move before thought catches me, before he does.

The first swing is not elegant. It is purely animal rage. The wood connects with the side of his face and something wet and hot erupts across my palm. He staggers, not from the force so much as the surprise.