The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Forty Four

We encountered our first real problem at the top of the mountains on the book of the second day. At which point, the thirst and hunger was finally taking its toll on every last one of us.

Lilith was irritable. Morrigan bristled at every word, refusing to hide how much she despised being ordered around. And whenever Lilith spoke to her like a child, Morrigan took it out on me and Evadne.

I couldn’t quite see right, my limbs weakened, and my stomach gnawing wickedly, loud enough to make the group snicker. The ache in my left shoulder had ebbed, the wound healing slowly, but I suspected it had somehow gotten infected. I’d begun to feel feverish.

Couple that with the fatigue and cold, and I felt like death.

Which is why when noise swelled outside, excitedly, for the first time in an entire day, I just wanted to be done with the entire Selection. My head ached. My muscles felt like lead. My body felt too tight for my skin and too hot. I was shivering and shaking.

Soraya and Altheira have their swords out when we crest the hill. A third I don’t recognise or care to, struggles with something behind them. What was her name again? Brianne? Brielle?

Her face is etched around a snarl as her fist closes around the silver pommel of a great sword more than half her size, imbedded into a stone altar at the center of the mountain top.

Though, the sun is hidden behind the clouds, rays bounce off the steel, the dame at the hilt seeming to laugh at us as Brian pulls and pulls to no avail.

"Soraya," Lilith calls out, her voice strained. "You are out numbered. Step aside, let me take the sword, and I might let you live."

The shadow wielder scans the lot of us with dark eyes, her deep black leathers untouched. "I was here first. And we both know the challenge cannot be completed if the sword remains unmoved. What’s to say that if I step aside, you won’t screw us all over to trigger the end of this stage?"

Lilith smirks and I might have imagined it, but there is a flash of heat in the air. "Fighting me won’t help the odds, either. You best save your strength for surviving the next two dawns. I have long been invested in becoming an ally of House Vaelthorn."

Soraya snorts. "Everyone knows your words and oath mean nothing."

A soft giggle slips from Lilith and she inclines her red head towards me. "Bring me the sword, leech."

Soraya appraises me with a long, ancient look, and her fingers tighten around her daggers like I am some threat she has perceived. "If we cannot get it out, how will that scrawny thing do it?"

Lilith doesn’t respond, only arching a dark red brow. "Do you need an incentive to move?" she purrs, green eyes flicking to Evadne.

Bile rises in my gut, the wind peppering against my skin as I blink back a heavy haze of dizziness as I spy a glance at Evadne. She’s not doing much better than me, her breaths becoming thinner and thinner by the second. Her wounds have healed, but Lilith has ensured they stay reopened, leaving heavy tracks in the snow. If we both didn’t die of hypothermia, Evadne might die of blood loss.

Morrigan cuts the bind around my wrists loose and kicks me forward. I can barely keep from crashing hard into the ground.

Tired. So tired...

I stumble for the sword, swaying tiredly. My mouth tastes like ash, the ache in my shoulder pulsing like a thing wanting to be acknowledged. Horridly enough, the ache reverberates in my very skull, making it hard to focus or keep my head on straight.

Brie steps aside, eyes alert and filled with suspicion.

The silver dame on the sword smiles up at me. Or maybe the fever has gotten to my head and I’ve begun hallucinating.

Touch me, it sings to me. Use me, little one. Free me.

I blink at it piece of metal, sharp, glinting without rust. The words repeat again and again in my head and if I hadn’t already experienced the most bizarre things since finding out what I was, then maybe I might have screamed and said, "THAT SWORD IS TALKING TO ME!"

Instead, I reach for the crafted silver. It is warm to touch, despite the terrible cold. And that ancient voice sighs in my head. Finally.

I’ve heard once that sometimes, a blade takes the shape of it’s users soul. Keeping to one blade for a long time makes it an extension of you. In the oddest ways. I wonder if because of the godly power in the Lycan’s veins it makes their blades... sentient.

Or maybe I’m just one trip away from the looney bin.

I don’t even try. My fingers close around the blade and pull. It begins to move.

The crazy people on the other side of the door begin to cheer crazily, adding to the ache pounding along my temples. Ly-ra! They chant. And I wonder if they do not realize that retrieving this sword means Lilith will have no use for me. It means I’ll die.

I hesitate, blinking tiredly. Still, I didn’t have a choice. I knew I had to do it. Every route lead there. Bitter tears sting at my eyes as I think the world everyone else does.

Fucking pathetic.

I rip the sword from the boulder like it was nothing but dust holding it together. The screech sounds like laughter grating against my mind. Use me! Use me!

Before I can comprehend any of it, the sword is torn from my hands with a chipper compliment from Lilith. "Very good."

She stares at the blade with reverence and tuts softly. And without missing a single beat, in half a second or even less than that time, she whirls with such frightening speed, I barely catch the movement at all. The blade is engulfed in flames and she swings it viciously.

For Soraya’s head.

The Vaelthorn heir barely has time to move. No one could have predicted that. No one could have stopped it.

But someone did.

Brianne of House Caelthorne does the unthinkable. Being the only one close enough to reach Soraya in time, she doesn’t hesitate, not one breath, before stepping into Lilith’s path and taking the strike for Soraya.

The strength in it takes Brianne’s shoulder and cleaves her chest down to her torso. And her body bursts into red flames.

A shriek of outrage cleaves the world in half. It might have come from Soraya. It might have come from the other side of the arena. But it is a heart-rending sound, the sound of a world, an entire universe in the body of one person being destroyed.

"Brie!" Soraya howls, completely undone. She drops to the ground, forgetting herself, her blades, her own hands as she reaches for the flames, a shadow of darkness engulfing the body and putting it out. "Oh, gods no," she sobs. "Gods, no."

There’s nothing left to salvage. The body burned beyond repair, already turning to black dust.

"I suppose that leaves nine," Lilith says nonchalantly.

When Soraya finally looks up, it is with icy glittering rage. With such unending pain and madness that my knees weaken. Because I recognise that look. I’d seen it in Zara’s eyes before I killed her. Whatever the heir of Caelthorne was to Soraya, they had loved each other.

She launches herself at Lilith, screaming.

And that, is the ripple that explode into the tidal wave, because every alliance seems to shatter at that.

Altheira slams into Morrigan. Evadne bends back in an impossible angle and sinks her teeth into the neck of the woman who had taken pleasure in ripping open her wounds again and again. I couldn’t be bothered with her name, though she wears the sigil of the bear over her heart.

The anger I feel isn’t human. I feel the stirring in my gut. "Stop."

Everything. Stops.

Because I will it. I command it.

Something cruel flicks an eye open inside me and I cock my head at Morrigan, extending my hand to her. "Come here."

"Take it," I say in a whisper as soft as a caress.

A smile curves against my lips. "Die."

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