When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
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I held my breath as I felt the tides slowly drown me beneath the waves.
I held my breath as I watched the front door and prayed with everything in me that the waves would turn over the tides.
I held my breath as I listened to the waves crash onto shore.
Every shallow inhale felt deafening in the still air. I felt like I was swallowing blades with every passing second. The only sound in the room came from the breeze rustling through the trees and the endless rumble of the vents trenching beneath the floors.
I nipped away at the already raw-torn flesh of my lips and tasted blood, the iron twinge overwhelming my senses.
It seemed like an eternity that nothing happened. For every empty inhale, it was met with an equally empty exhale.
I closed my eyes and even though Derek had cut through the ropes binding my wrists and ankles to the chair, I didn't dare move out of it. I didn't even dare to blink, afraid if I did, the worst would happen.
But that's the thing. The worst was already destined to come.
One minute, I was sitting, eyes closed, and breaths ragged in an unmoving room, and the next, a fiery explosion of noise blasted through the walls. An ear splitting boom racketed up a cloud of dust around the threshold as the door fell to the ground. Shouts rang out. Guns were drawn. Boots pounded on concrete.
I peeked my eyes open and blinked in the onslaught of light and dust from beyond the door. A cough rattled my chest, but it quickly bled into a sharp sob as the dust gave way to a towering shadow - one who was all straight lines and tense limbs.
Edrian's murderous expression, eyes blazing and jaw taut, dropped with stark relief at the sound and I all but leaped out of my seat to run to him. His eyes locked onto mine and the fierce adoration and love pouring through seeped into my veins with such warmth that even when the gaping wound in my thigh screamed at me to stop and the cuts on my shoulders spilled over a little faster, I kept running.
His eyes shot to the wounds, and they darkened to an obsidian black. So black, it seemed to swallow light. Rage poured out of him in potent waves, so thick I could feel it even with the distance between us.
I was almost within arm's reach. A few more steps and I would be safe - with him.
But then a hand shot out to grab a fistful of my hair and yanked me back a step. A scream tore through my throat and my hands instinctively shot out to the hand tearing at my hair out of my scalp. Derek only laughed at my pathetic attempts.
"Did you really think it would be that easy, Aleia darling?" he sneered into my ear. "That what? I would let you run off to your Prince Charming and game over?" He chuckled. "I don't think so."
"Let her go," Edrian barked.
Derek tsked, and as if to make a point, he yanked my hair even harder. I cried out at the rush of pain.
