I waited.
Neither of them made a move to pull Scorpius off me.
They flanked him.
I ignored Scorpius slowly asphyxiating me and stared at the twins.
“Traitors,” I gasped out, my voice raspy from lack of air.
John didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He did nothing to show that he’d heard me. His familiar dimples had transformed into harsh lines that highlighted the fury on his handsome face.
He was a stranger.
“Is it true, Aran?” he asked cryptically, voice hard and deep.
“What?” I asked. My heart hurt.
John took a step closer. “Tell me right now that it’s not fucking true.” Darkness glinted and twisted around him like living shadows.
I blinked.
John’s image changed.
A cape of darkness was draped across his shoulders and blew on a phantom breeze. A jagged crown sat atop his dark curls and his eyes were pools of darkness. His features were hard.
There was nothing boyish about him.
I blinked.
The crown and cape disappeared, but his rage remained.
Scorpius’s grip on my neck tightened, and I choked on air.
Betrayal mixed with asphyxiation, and suddenly it hit me—I’d had enough.
Kicking out and flexing with all my might, I ripped my neck out of Scorpius’s grip and climbed to my feet.
I stalked toward the man I thought I loved.
Chest to chest with John, I asked him, “What are you talking about?” He’d taken off his combat boots to stitch a foot wound, but I still had mine on.
We were eye to eye.
Up close, John’s darkness shimmered. Ice spread across the side of his face where I breathed on him. His expression was severe.
A stranger stood before me.
It wasn’t John who answered my question.
Scorpius’s voice was cruel behind me. “I heard what you said to Sadie.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations,” I replied, still facing John. “I don’t owe you any explanation for something you weren’t meant to hear.”
“Please,” Scorpius spat. “Save your excuses.”
John’s frown deepened.
Malum made a strangled noise.
Ice expanded out from me like an infection. Scarlet flames leaped higher in my peripheral vision.
A soldier whistled, and I jolted as I remembered where we were. Someone’s amputated arm was lying on a silver tray a couple feet away. Doctors and soldiers were staring at us with open mouths.
A tension headache throbbed in my left temple.
“I’m not doing this.” I stalked out of the medical barracks. The freezing wind slammed the door shut satisfyingly behind me.
I only made it a few steps into the blizzard before I was picked up and thrown over a flaming shoulder like a sack of grain.
My mind flatlined, and I hung limp.
Snow whipped around the realm in a frenzy.
I slammed frozen hands across Malum’s flaming back, cobalt blue streaming from my fingertips as trails of ice covered his coat.
The world was viciously cold and angry.
So was I.
Cobalt dissipated as the scarlet flames on Malum’s shoulders spread down his back. I hit him repeatedly, kicked my legs, and screamed into the howling wind as I froze him.
He thawed.
I covered him in streaks of cobalt.
Flames turned ice into water; ice chased away flames.
We were locked in battle.
Malum abruptly stopped walking, and he went impossibly still amongst the frozen white trees.
His hand settled on my ass; fingers splayed possessively. It was deliciously warm, and I hated myself for noticing.
“Hurt me as much as you want, my Revered.” Malum’s voice was gravelly. “I prefer it.” His voice dropped an octave, and the hand against my ass started to burn like it had caught fire. “But you have a lot of explaining to do.”
He resumed walking down the path.
“I’m not yours,” I said as he hoisted me into our barracks.
I waited, but he didn’t put me down on my bunk like I expected—he stalked into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and tried to throw me into the tub.
I punched and kicked with all my might, but he used his freakish size to overpower me.
He pushed me under the spray.
Why was everyone obsessed with the shower lately?
Men discovered personal hygiene one day and suddenly it was talk to me in the shower, meet me in the shower, get in the shower, Aran.
The water sputtered.
Hot drops turned into snowflakes; ice hissed as it trailed across the ancient porcelain tub; the spray slowed as the showerhead turned cobalt blue.