All The Queen's Monsters (The Queen's Slave, Book 3)

Twenty Five: In Death's Eyes

"Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does."

-Johnathan Safran Foer

A Z A L E A

I tried.

I tried to sit there and force myself to hear everything she was saying, to take in every horrible detail of my twin brother's capture and torture, but I couldn't.

Not after hearing that his sins now matched mine.

The twisted scar tissue decorating my back itched and burned as I tore out the front door, falling to my knees in the forest soil, heaving my guts out. My chest felt tight, and I gasped for air, clutching at my skin with desperation, tears slipping down my cheeks. I couldn't understand how I had failed again, to protect the ones I loved. I couldn't even rejoice in the fact that he was alive, after knowing everything Elisabeth's mother and her guards had done to him. It should've been me. My wolf paced at the back of my mind, and I dug my fingers into the cool soil, my skin rippling, the pack bonds twisted around my mental fingers like strings to a puppet.

All I had to do was pull, and they'd come to my aid. I released them, all but one.

This was my burden to bear, and yet I couldn't do this without them.

I was grateful that Elizabeth and Kore had left me be, though I felt them hovering at the back of my mind, their concern and sorrow apparent. I seethed, baring my teeth at the clouds in the sky, roaring into the first drops of rain and crack of thunder, a brief flash of lightning flaring across the sky, as if the god's themselves were blaming me too. I let it come, and before long, a golden wolf stepped from the trees. Her tawny gaze searched mine as she circled me warily, her wolf breath steaming in the air. The clothes I wore were constricting, so I tore them off, replacing them with fur. I felt the soil dig into my rough paw pads and curled my claws into it, and more streaks of lightening haloed our lethal forms throughout the hailing and unforgiving rain.

"Alpha." Cara greeted, butting her head against my shoulder.

I licked my chops, my lips peeled back. "Come with me, I'm gathering the pack."

Wordlessly, she followed me into the darkness of the trees. My mind worked overtime to figure out a way into Ravenna's palace. My mind rippled with memories, pulling me into the rift before I could try and stop it.

My blood slid down the steps, and I watched it with fascination, feeling my body jerk with each strike of the whip yet not feeling the pain of it anymore. Rain and blood swirled into shapes, faces, or maybe that was the insanity looming at the back of my mind, threatening to drag me under.

Smack.

My bare feet slipped across the stone as a flicker of burning pain alerted me to my failing body, my weight sinking until I was held up by just the shackles. I looked up through my curtain of hair, my eyesight blurry and distorted, though I found Ravenna's easily. Her madness prodded the parts of me that wanted so desperately to rebel, as she ordered Elizabeth to strike me again.

"Lash her until that look is gone." She snarled, and again my body jerked, and I felt it.

Pain, so much pain ignited my ruined nerves. It was so profound, so unbelievable that I couldn't draw breath. My mouth opened in a silent scream, the shackles cutting into my wrists, warm blood dripping down my arms. I twitched, a fish caught on the end of a pike, and my mate was the one to flay me open. Elizabeth's mind slammed against the barrier I'd erected, a building mass of panic and fear and so much rage I could taste it.