Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(71)
My jaw muscles locked. He blamed his desire on my reckless passion? Did he remember the truth of me was so devastating it killed all but three people at the convent? “You would do well to keep your distance.”
His nostrils flared. He prowled around me like a panther. “You’re right. You’re a demon in a girl’s body! You’ve been sent here to destroy me, haven’t you?”
“You tell me.” By the gods, I couldn’t hold my savage tongue any more than he could. “From the looks of it, I seem to be succeeding.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me against the wall. My head followed like the lashing of a whip. Through my blackening vision, my gaze wavered to the slitted door. I could have called out for help, but a rush of boldness overtook me. I turned back to the emperor and gave him a vixen’s smile.
“It’s not too late to do away with you, you know?” Valko’s thumbs slid along my collarbone until they probed the base of my neck. He pinched my airway and sent blood throbbing through my head.
I drew in a ragged breath. Deep inside me someone screamed, someone pleaded for something I no longer had ears to hear. I cared more for the ultimate suffering the emperor tempted me with, my final amends to the Auraseers at the convent. To Yuliya. Perhaps death was what I had wanted all along. The necessary sacrifice for redemption. I set my jaw. “Do it, Valko. End my suffering.”
The door opened wider on silent hinges. Anton emerged on the threshold. The shadowy figures of other people in the room stood far behind him. In the prince’s hand was a dagger.
Valko still thought we were alone. With his back to his brother, his lips stretched over his teeth. His hands clawed up to my face. “You are mine!” He shook me. “No one commands you to leave me. Not Floquart. Most certainly not you.” In another abrupt mood change, he yanked me forward until my mouth crashed on his.
The darkness overtook me completely. Had it sourced from me all along? I kissed him back, fangs and forked tongue like the serpent I was. Nothing resembling love or tenderness emitted from either of us.
When Valko’s lips traveled to my neck, my gaze fell on Anton. I saw him dimly, like peering at someone past a sheet of rain. His aura couldn’t reach me, not in the state I was in, but his eyes held everything I couldn’t feel. Sorrow. Pain. Not the pain Valko infected me with—the pain I welcomed—but a lonely variety. A mourning pain, like I was lost, and there was nothing he could do to recover me.
Was I lost? Was I the mirror I’d pledged I wasn’t? Did I only reflect the madness of the world?
My hands trembled as I fought to raise them. I set them on Valko’s chest. I pushed him away. I wasn’t lost. “Stop.”
His eyes narrowed, his face flushed with passion. “You can’t have it both ways, Sonya. Not anymore. You can’t be the doe and the demon. I know you now.”
My teeth rattled as I struggled against his emotions. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Don’t tell me what I know!” He slammed me back again. I winced where the wall connected with the lump at the back of my skull. Anton’s dagger lifted. The blade caught the candlelight. I shook my head infinitesimally. I couldn’t let him get involved. Valko would have his brother executed if the prince tried and failed to kill him. And even if Anton aimed true, I wasn’t sure I could allow the emperor to die. Not even now. “You will respect me!” Valko shouted.
Find a space within yourself and cling to it.
This was that space—the small part of me that pulled away from the emperor, that defied him. He grabbed my wrists, one after the other, and pinned them against the wall. My head pulsed from being hit twice. My belly rumbled from starvation. My legs shook, ready to give way.
The space in me wasn’t great enough. Not against him.
A sob racked through my labored breathing, the weak fight in me to hold myself together. I needed emotional release. Every Auraseer had a form. Yuliya’s blood. Kira’s tears. Dasha’s hair. Nadia had the bite from staining her skin. Izolda, no doubt, welcomed the sting of splinters beneath her nails. Every release had one thing in common: pain.
My heartbeat thrashed through my ears as I fought to channel myself into a tiny space of control. Tremors racked my body in resistance, but I forced my suffering to intensify. I focused on every part of me that hurt. I needed pain to ground me for now, and in desperation, I sought it. I clung to it.
The throbbing ache of my bruised head. Valko’s iron grip on my wrists. The cramped knots in my starved stomach. The fire lining my throat from being half strangled.
I whimpered. I didn’t want to feel more. I didn’t know if this was helping at all. Pain would give me emotional distance from Valko, but it wouldn’t free me from his physical abuse.
“Do you respect yourself?” I asked the emperor in a fragile, broken voice. I faltered between succumbing to the beast in him and my inward chanting of I’m not enough. Nothing’s enough.
Valko’s mouth hovered near mine. His aura growled with hunger, with the dominion he sought to prove over me. “Of course I do.”
My breath came in short gasps. My heart hammered. “You were once a child like me, torn from your parents, from everything you knew. Abandoned when you needed love. You still need it.” His eyes rose from my lips to meet my beseeching gaze. “But not like this,” I said. “This isn’t love.”