A Vow So Bold and Deadly (The Cursebreaker Series Book 3)

I lose track of time. There’s a slow, incessant dripping somewhere to my left, but I don’t know if it’s been going on for hours or minutes or seconds—or years. I don’t know if I’ve lost consciousness or if I’ve been awake this whole time.

The pain hasn’t gone anywhere.

My left eye won’t open, and my right eye is crusted with blood that drags at my eyelashes when I blink. Dustan’s dead body is inches away. Blood has formed a puddle on the floor between us, but I can’t tell where mine ends and his begins.

I remember this. From the first time, when she killed my guardsmen. When she turned me into a monster that killed my family. I remember.

I don’t want to remember.

I lift a hand to touch my face, but I find torn skin and shredded flesh, and I suddenly can’t breathe. I jerk my hand down, but the motion is too quick, and I whimper.

“Problems?” says Lilith, and I clench my good eye shut.

She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Look what I’ve found,” she says, and something loud and heavy clatters to the ground in front of me. Bits of blood and worse things splash up to hit me in the face, and I jerk away.

But it forces my eye open. It’s an armored breastplate.

Zo, I think. But it could be anyone’s. Any of my people. It’s just a piece of armor.

Then a pile of red flesh lands on top of it. For the longest moment, my brain can’t make sense of it. It’s just a pile of bleeding muscle.

But then I realize what it is, and my own heart stops.

“Her heart, Your Highness,” Lilith whispers. “As promised.”