Ruins of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #3) - Amelia Hutchins Page 0,205

better than this, Peasant. Consider this before you reach your talons into his heart, seeking to give him pain. You can learn nothing, not until you realize that even monsters have nightmares. Come, I have a feeling the king won’t remain at his welcome party for long, not with the scent you’re creating right now. There’s also the fact you brought up his masculinity and said it was rather lacking and flawed in front of his brothers.”

“I’m losing control, and he knows all he has to do is wait for it to happen.”

“So stop fighting it, Peasant. Let go of that monster within you. It isn’t a weakness to give in to the urges you are feeling. Stop looking for the light and learn to accept what comes to you willingly in the dark. For without that darkness, the world would have never discovered the beauty of the stars. We can only see some of the most beautiful things through the darkness of the night. No one understands that within the darkness, monsters can hide in plain sight, not having to pretend to be anything other than what they truly are.”

“You’re very smart for being a meat suit, Greer.”

“You’re very stupid for being brilliant, but I wasn’t going to point that out since you’ve dealt with enough today. I think once you open your eyes to the world around you, you will discover so much more is happening. He can’t look away from you, Aria. Knox looks at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. You can’t see it yet, but you will. Neither of you understands what is truly happening here, but those who are watching, we see it.”

“I know he looks at me and finds me pleasing, Greer. Not in the way you think, though, obviously. He looks at me the way people look at a forest fire burning out of control. It’s beautiful, but you know it is deadly. You know it will destroy you and leave everything that once stood, in nothing more than ruins. He knows I am not the monster he wanted. I am the one he made.”

Chapter Fifty-One

Greer directed me to an empty bedroom containing only sheets and blankets. Frowning, I moved away from the obvious attempt at a joke as I sat in the window seat. I hadn’t expected to be welcomed to Dorcha. I’d known the entire way here that it would be hard for Knox to bring me to the home he’d once shared with his wife. Wrapping my arms around my knees, I stared out the window at people dancing and celebrating in the courtyard below.

His people planned his return with a party that showed how much they loved him in Norvalla’s capital. Knox was the hero in their story while I was their villain. I didn’t even pretend to find humor in it, considering it was laughable. I wasn’t villain material, caring about the weak that needed protecting, well, it made for a weak monster. I fought for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, for the assholes outside dancing who deserved to live free in the world without fear of being slaughtered. Yet they treated me like shit, like a monster.

Maybe I needed to stop fighting what they thought and just embrace it, as Greer had said. I was fighting a battle when they were waging war. I was trying to keep myself the same as I’d always been, but the cost was me, and maybe I had to change to be what they needed. I continued to bend, and if I kept doing that, I’d eventually break. I’d let Knox in. I’d fucking let him in to see me, and he’d completely destroyed me in the process.

Luna was working with dark witches, and Aine was missing. I’d come here for a reason, to get close to Knox, to make him see we weren’t all evil, but he wasn’t willing to see me yet. He looked, he judged, and he’d found me guilty without a trial or proof that I held ill will toward anyone. Knox wasn’t ready to free the ghosts that haunted him or face the reality that we went deeper than the whisper of flesh or the marks he’d placed upon my skin.

This was a different time.

A different world!

But it was the same graveyard.

I couldn’t turn back time or raise the dead. I couldn’t plant flowers over their graves and think it would ease the grief and pain of those who