The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Forty Three

Valka

Lilith didn’t kill me.

I stagger against the snow on shaky feet, breathing in the freezing air, and my body trembles from exhaustion. The binds around my wrist scrape my skin raw and I grimace as Morrigan kicks my shin, sending me sprawling into the mud. "Move, bitch."

I might have laid right there, out of spite, if every resistance I gave didn’t earn Evadne another punch to the face.

Whatever she had planned didn’t work. Her left eye is punched shut, her lips cut. Her--my leather, is torn up in different vital places, like she had been carved up with a blade, though the skin underneath retains only a faint bruising. An arrow is lodged in her shoulder and her body is soaked in blood, her dark hair matted with it.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what the fault with her planning was. She hadn’t accounted for the fact that Lilith and Morrigan might have made an alliance. And she’d walked straight into a trap, dressed up as me.

My fault.

Everything lately seems to be my fault somehow.

Our group is a large one, considering the announcement an hour ago that there were only ten of us left. Six dead. Three somewhere else, hidden from Lilith while the rest defer to her like she’s already been crowned queen and them, her happy pawns.

It does make sense that they would. Best to be the one beating the ’hostages’ than be the ’hostage’. Either way, none of it explains why Lilith had sheathed her sword, rather than slitting my throat with it. She hasn’t so much as looked at me in the hours since we began our long trek up the mountain.

Maybe she was saving the spectacle for killing me for the grandest? Maybe she got a sick thrill from having her prey stew and fidget with the idea of death, growing inevitably anxious about it before she granted it. I didn’t get it. And I hated not knowing. Not knowing what to expect. Not knowing ’when’ to expect.

I spit grit from my mouth, glaring up at Morrigan. "Maybe tell me where you’re dragging me first. Then I’ll consider being your good little bitch."

Morrigan golden skin ripples into a snarl, fist curling, but Lilith’s hand lands lightly on her shoulder.

"Stand down, Ashwynd. You’ll have your turn."

Stepping forward regally, Lilith drops into a low crouch. Her jade green eyes, a lighter shade Ilya’s are somehow filled with more darkness than I could possibly wrap my mind around. She cocks her head in a predatory manner, nostrils flaring as they settle on my collar, as though she can see the mark lurking under the fabric.

"I’ve never seen the need to divulge details to the dead," she says. Her voice is soft, almost tiny, like a breath of ash on the wind. Deceptive. Misleading. "But I suppose I could make an exception."

Her nails coated in a deep shade of red that looks like blood twirls playfully around a blade. "The tasks have remained unchanged in the years since the first Selection. A beast to be slaughtered, it’s hide presented to the King. This Selection’s task, however, was changed at the King’s behest. I hadn’t understood why. Until last night." She stares at her delicate fingers, so unlike my calloused ones. "My fire may burn hotter than the rage of a roaring lion, but I do not have steel in my blood."

My brows furrow in confusion. Her words sound like a whole bunch of jargon to me.

Seeing my confusion, she smiles, peering me down her nose like I am a foolish child. "I know who and what you are, Lyra Nythorn. The King might dress you up and teach you to mimic our ways, but you’re still a leech, like the rest of your kind. A leech who has seduced the King into shielding her from immediate death." She stares at my neck with such hostility, I know she imagines snapping it in half. "The first queen, Sorscha Ironfang’s sword hasn’t been removed from that stone for decades, because only one with the steel in their blood may remove it."

"Steel in...their blood..." I echo.

Lilith nods. "You are Ironfang. You will get it out of the stone and hand it to me. Then, I will gift you the death you deserve and deliver your head to His Majesty myself."

Ah, well. That explains it.

Her palm slams flat against my neck, directly over the symbol of Lucien’s claim. Pain explodes through me like liquid fire as her magic digs in, not cutting flesh, but burning through it. My mark sears and screams. The air itself warps around us, thick with the stench of scorched skin and iron.

I thrash, but her other hand pins me by the throat with cruel, unshaking ease.

"What the hell are you doing, Lilith?!" Evadne snarls, shoving forward, only to be stopped by Morrigan’s boot to her spine. "You cannot use your powers! You break the rules!"

"But I am not using them," Lilith tuts innocently. "We Blackspires burn hot. It is not my fault her skin reacts to my bare touch like this."

"You feel that?" she breathes, eyes wild as an unholy scream rips from me. "I’m peeling him off you. Piece by piece. Until nothing of him is left. Until you are nothing." As if to enunciate every word, the heat tripped and I feel my skin scald. Melt. It is not the pain of being run through or beaten to a pulp. Neither is the the pain of being whipped. It is something worse, like the flames of hell melting my bones to liquid.

Black swarms my vision, the pain nearly swallowing me whole.

Then she lets go.

I crumple to the snow, clutching at my chest, trembling as the cold white sizzles against my ruined skin. My mark is still there, but faint, ghostlike, raw as an open wound. It’ll heal, but gods, it burns.

Lilith runs a claw over my cheek. "The next time you speak to me like that again, girl, you will watch sweet Eva burn to ashes for your sake. And when her screaming stops, you’ll hear your own."

My chest rises and falls as I stare up at her, watching her straighten and saunter ahead of the group in a graceful walk, every head bowed in deference to her, and I can’t help thinking Lucien should’ve just made her queen.

It would’ve spared us all the terror.