Rise of a Queen (Kingdom Duet #2) - Rina Kent Page 0,25

turns it out, she’s been squeezing a shard of glass. She points it at my neck, her breathing still chopped and uneven, but her eyes are blazing with sure determination.

This fucking woman has no thought for her safety whatsoever if she was holding a shard of glass against her already wounded palm. Or maybe an injury or two doesn’t matter to her as long as she gets to run.

She’s an expert at that.

Running the fuck away.

“What are you going to do with that, Aurora? Are you going to slice my throat?”

“I will if you don’t let me go.”

“The only way I’ll let you out is if you fucking talk, so you might as well go for it.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.” Her voice breaks.

“Try again.”

“Let me go, Jonathan, please.”

“No.”

“I’ll hurt you.”

“Do it.”

“I really will.”

“Fucking do it then.”

She pushes the shard against my throat and I see the widening of her eyes before I feel the sting of the cut.

Then my blood flows to her face.

10

Aurora

Hot liquid lands on my cheek, my nose, my mouth, and I taste metal.

Blood metal.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

My hand shakes uncontrollably and I release the shard of glass, letting it fall to the mattress. The blood mars the white sheets, soaking them red.

No, no…

Flashbacks from that day slam into me. The bloodshot eyes, the vacant look, the blood that trickled down her arms.

It’s happening again. It’s coming back.

Jonathan pushes off me, sitting on the bed, groaning. That manages to finally jerk me out of my daze.

Oh my God. I did that to Jonathan. I…I sliced his throat.

“Oh my God…” I breathe out loud as I straddle his lap and wrap a quivering hand on the wound in his neck. “I’m so sorry, so s-so sorry, I…I d-didn’t mean it, I only wanted… I’m s-so sorry…”

“I’ll survive,” he says it with enough ease that it should soothe me. It doesn’t. All I can focus on is the blood seeping through my fingers, covering them. I did that. Just like Dad.

I’m just like Dad.

Oh, God.

I’m going to throw up.

“Hey…” Jonathan’s soothing voice echoes in the air. “Look at me.”

I can’t. All of my attention is on the trail of blood that is seeping through his cut and slipping between my fingers. The blood that I brought out. What was I thinking? This is Jonathan. How could I cut him?

“Aurora.” His fingers stroke through my hair, then slowly slide to my chin, lifting it and gently guiding me to stare at him.

I’m trapped in those eyes I spent weeks and months getting lost in. Eyes I was going to turn vacant just like my dad did to those women.

“It’s just a graze.”

“It’s not!” My voice shatters, tears falling down my cheeks. “I’m just like him, aren’t I?”

“No, you’re not.”

He grabs a tissue from the side table, removes my hand, and wipes his neck. “See, it looks worse than it is.”

Now that it’s not covered with blood, the cut isn’t long, but it’s there, and it’s still bleeding. The more blood comes out, the harder the tears leave my eyes.

“I’m going to fix it,” I say through sniffles. “I know how.”

I crawl to the first aid kit on the bedside table, then go back to straddling Jonathan’s lap. Although I expect him to push me away, and he has every right to, he doesn’t.

Jonathan leans on one hand as the other goes back to stroking my hair.

I retrieve the disinfectant and clean the wound with barely steady hands. I can’t stop crying, even when the blood dries. By the time I place the gauze on his skin, I’m a sobbing mess.

Jonathan pushes me back so that I’m sitting on my haunches on his thighs and changes my bandages. He glares at the cut on my palm from when I clutched the shard of glass earlier. The fact that he disapproves of how I reopened my wounds, and then made them worse, is loud and clear in his dark gaze.

“Hurt yourself again and I’m tying you the fuck up, Aurora.”

A sniffle is my answer. I couldn’t talk even if I wanted to. My attention keeps filtering back to the gauze on his neck, to the blood that’s soaking the collar of his shirt.

“How do you know how to do it?” he asks in a quiet tone.

“W-what?” I manage through tears.

“You said you know how to fix it.” He pours disinfectant on my palm, but I don’t even wince. He pays special care to wipe his blood from