Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
This cold sensation grew large in my chest. Rage was hot and rage was loud. This emotion was the quiet country on the other side of rage, where a woman went after she had buried something she would never get back, and decided what she would do with the years she had not been given.
“I don’t know why you’re over here. I’m protected as the mother to Hiro’s twins.”
I leaned over her. "You're correct, Kiko, but not about being protected.”
“What?”
“You’re correct.” I lifted my hands. "I'm not a boss."
“Get away from me—”
My hands closed around her throat.
I sneered as I choked her. "I'm a fucking queen."
She didn't have time for a scream. All that came was this wet, broken little sound at the back of her tongue—a huk—as my thumbs pressed in over the soft place under her jaw and the rest of my fingers locked behind her neck.
Her hands came up fast and she began clawing at my forearms. Her nails were long. They were painted a glossy red. They tore long burning red lines down my brown skin.
But I kept that hold on her fucking neck and thought again about all the memories of my baby girl and how she had smiled at me in those visions.
Kiko’s eyes bulged as she scratched at my arms and kicked the bed.
“You’re definitely a boss, Kiko.” I stared into those bulging eyes filling with tears and terror. “And now you get to die like a boss, by a furious queen’s hands. Be lucky I came off my throne to do it, bitch.”
The whites of her eyes swelled. Those brown pupils drowned. Red spread fast through the whites in tiny burst lines, branching outward from the corners.
“Protected? You think I’m going to let you raise Hiro’s twins?”
Her mouth opened, and her tongue pushed forward. Air rasped out of her in a dry, sick scrape and did not come back in.
“I’m going to tell them that you fucking died during childbirth, bitch.”
Her nails dug deeper.
Blood welled up on my forearms in beaded lines and slid down.
“And you’ll just be a footnote in their lives. That’s the difference between a boss and a queen.” I felt all of it. The wet warmth on my skin. The bones of her neck under my thumbs. The tendons. The cord of her windpipe, the wrong shape now, crushed into a flatter shape than it was meant to be.
The way her shoulders started to twist as her body figured out what was happening to it and tried to throw me off one final time.
But, I held on.
I was stronger than her now.
Stronger than ever before.
The sacrifice and Kenji’s blood had given me a new body, mind, and soul.
She thrashed some more. Her legs kicked under the sheet. The bed banged against the wall once, twice.
A thin red line of blood ran out of her left nostril.
“That’s right.” I watched it and smiled. “I won’t be the only woman on this island to bleed tonight. You’ll bleed too.”
The blood ran down the curve of her lip. It pooled in the corner of her mouth where her tongue still pushed at the air she could not catch.
And then. . .her hands left my forearms. They went up to my face. She tried to scratch at my eyes. Her nails scrabbled across my cheekbone and missed. She tried for my throat.
Her hand was too weak now. It slid off my collarbone, bumped against the soul pin, and fell back.
I leaned harder. The bones under my thumbs gave a little.
Her tongue came farther out of her mouth.
The red in her eyes had taken over almost all of the whites.
Then finally. . .her hands fell, and her body shuddered and then went still.
She was gone.
Yet. . .I just. . .couldn’t let go.
I had to make sure.
So. . .I stood right there. . .and continued to choke that lifeless body. . .
How long did I do that?
Surely, time passed.
I remembered hearing someone call my name.
Maybe, Deja.
Perhaps, Yoichi.
Tears spilled from my eyes and I thought of my baby girl and choked that bitch some more.
And Yoichi’s hands wrapped around mine and pulled me off of her utterly broken, purple neck. A vision hit me when we connected.
The room disappeared and I stood outside several feet behind Yoichi as he stood outside too. It was raining and Yoichi was staring in the window.
I walked over and saw that inside the house was a young woman singing to a baby as she rocked him.
And I knew that the woman was Kenji’s mother, and the baby was Kenji, and that Yoichi was looking at the next mission he had to complete to hopefully end his curse.
Then, the vision left and I finally let go.
Chapter eleven
Unreasonable Hope
Kenji
My dragon-shadow had roared, “WAR!”
He had torn the word from his chest and thrown it at the sky.