Dark Nine ❈ Dark Nine Universe Bk1 ❈

Chapter Thirty-Two

Alpha Centauri's POV

Orlai looks like a lost little dove as she watches me from far away while I'm up on my throne. I let my squad circle her, invisible. They liked to stealth when assessing fresh prey. Orlai will be judged by them. I was too fucked up about her to make a coherent decision.

We had unfinished business, I just had to work out how to deal with her.

Part of me wanted to gift her the collar of the damned and have her chained to my throne until her death. Another part of me wanted to love her, despite the insult of six long destinies living happily away from me. I know she survived because of our son.

But me.

What did I get in that deal?

Orlai took all the light from my life.

Diana... she called me a liar.

A fucking liar. I had never been a liar, but I was one the day Orlai left. The day I thought she killed herself. She didn't just run, she took off all her clothes and left them next to a pile of ash and bone. It was meticulous. Back when we used to feast traditionally, it looked like she just threw herself into the fire.

She deceived me beyond a kind limit.

She made me believe she was dead. And she never came back.

"Alpha Centauri," Orlai calls to me for assistance with her singing voice.

The squad are closing in around her while she twirls, confused as they smell her and she can't see them.

"Who is this one," Proxima shows himself, a red giant standing over Orlai, he had been leaning down, about to bite her neck, but he wanted to know her importance first. She gasps and leaps to the side, only to get knocked into the others, who hold her still.

"Please, don't kill me," Orlai begs, terrified, looking for mercy, but Proxima won't linger his gaze on a begging woman.

He turns to me.

She reaches out an arm and clutches onto his hand, and Proxima looks down at her little pale fingers, clutching desperately over his, watching her try, too feeble.

She's so cute. If Diana was here she'd be trying to save her. I saw the way they acted, they were friendly. But Orlai was the soft bird, and Diana was the Dark Nine, the Empress.

I wish I could see her face right now, screaming to let her friend go, to stop taunting her, demanding I stop them playing with her.

I wish I could hear it.

For now, as they release her, it's enough to cause Orlai to eventually drop to her knees, crying. Especially when Proxima took his hand away from her.

No one was softer than her.

"Bring her to me, Rigil," I command my cousin, and he appears looking unsavoury at the tears and the crying. He picks her up and leads her to me by the hand.

Orlai falls to my knees, her hand clasping my leg, as she looks up, begging for mercy from me now.

"Please," she begs again.

"I'm not going to kill you," I explain, quickly, "I'm going to keep you alive – a fate worse than death for a little bird like you. You'll live to witness us."

"Witness what?" she whispers, confused.

"Sit on my knee," as I say it she clambers up to sit on my lap.

Her eyes were different to what I remember.

I'm sure she sees the difference in me too.

When she met me, I was only kind to her and nothing else, even when I was cruel to all others.