I whirled around and glared up at him.
“Let go of me,” I breathed, even while my heart burst. “I don’t want to ever see your face again.”
He stepped back, the expression on his face tearing me apart. As I disappeared into the shade of the forest, he didn’t follow me. Thorns cut my feet as I ran. Biting my lip, I relished the pain. I wanted more of it. I dug my nails into my right arm and scratched until I’d etched a deep cut. Blood flowed. And I wished that it flowed more. Because it distracted me from recalling his expression. It distracted me from his memory. From the bonfire in my heart.
I thought I could hide behind my childish games. I thought I could trick fate, trick destiny, with some stupid act. What a damn fool I’ve been.
I barged through my front door, ran to the desk and, scrambling in the drawers, took out the story. The story that I had once so dearly cherished. The story that I now hated with every fiber of my being. In a wild rage, page by page, I ripped the parchment to pieces, and with it, my heart ripped too.
But I didn’t care.
I needed my heart to be ripped.
I needed it to stop feeling. To stop beating.
I needed it to be numb.
“Numbness.”
Once my floor was covered in shreds, I gathered them together and hurled them in the lake. As they shrivelled up, tears flowed more heavily from my eyes. Angrily, I brushed them aside.
If it hadn’t been for that story, Kai would never have died. I wouldn’t have had to let Evie go.
And Kiev never would have kissed Mona.
It wasn’t fair that I’d allowed him to do it. He didn’t know the price that came with that kiss. If he had known, he never would have claimed it.
He didn’t know why I’d had to watch my family—parents, sisters, brothers, and cousins—die when I was a young girl.
He didn’t know why I’d been banished from my own realm.
He didn’t know why I’d never known romance.
I had fooled myself that perhaps the curse had passed over me. That perhaps I was unnecessarily restricting myself from living. I had dared to hope. Dared to dream. And in entertaining such foolish notions, I’d become complacent. In trying to finish that stupid story, I’d let myself climb out of my cage. When I should have kept the lock fastened and thrown away the key.
But then my baby Kai had died.
And I’d known then that the chain had been set off again.
Now I feared that it was only a matter of time.
I have to leave this place.
As the last bloodstained shreds of Adrian and Irina’s story drowned beneath the water lilies, I just prayed that the damage hadn’t already been done.
Ready for the next part of Kiev and Mona’s story?
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Bella x
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Further note from the author
If you would like to learn more about Kiev, and you haven’t yet read my A Shade of Vampire series, I suggest you read it because it’s where Kiev’s story started. You’ll also get a deeper understanding of the world in which he now finds himself.
Here’s a link to A Shade of Vampire Book 1, currently only $0.99 (or 77p in the UK)!:
Click Here
Table of Contents
Also By Bella Forrest:
Prologue: Kiev
Chapter 1: Kiev
Chapter 2: Kiev
Chapter 3: Kiev
Chapter 4: Kiev
Chapter 5: Kiev
Chapter 6: Mona
Chapter 7: Kiev
Chapter 8: Mona
Chapter 9: Kiev
Chapter 10: Kiev
Chapter 11: Mona
Chapter 12: Kiev
Chapter 13: Mona
Chapter 14: Kiev
Chapter 15: Kiev
Chapter 16: Mona
Chapter 17: Kiev
Chapter 18: Kiev
Chapter 19: Mona
Chapter 20: Kiev
Chapter 21: Kiev
Chapter 22: Mona
Chapter 23: Kiev
Chapter 24: Mona
Chapter 25: Kiev
Chapter 26: Mona
Chapter 27: Kiev
Chapter 28: Mona
Chapter 29: Kiev
Chapter 30: Mona
Chapter 31: Mona
Chapter 32: Mona
Chapter 33: Kiev
Chapter 34: Mona
Chapter 35: Kiev
Chapter 36: Mona
Chapter 37: Kiev
Chapter 38: Kiev
Chapter 39: Mona
Chapter 40: Kiev
Chapter 41: Kiev
Chapter 42: Mona
Chapter 43: Kiev
Chapter 44: Mona
Chapter 45: Mona
Ready for the next part of Kiev and Mona’s story?
Further note from the author
A Shade of Vampire 8: A Shade of Kiev Page 17
