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“Haven’t you noticed?” he asked quietly. “That voice you used to hear, the one whispering for you to hurt people? It is your voice.” Silence crashed between us. The only sound was my thunderous heartbeat as I clenched the knife beneath the water. “And I love you all the same.”

Before I realised what I was doing, I lunged from the bath.

Chapter Eighteen

Bleed For Me

Lyra

Water crashed over the tiled floor as I slammed into Helion, straddling his lap hard enough to drive him back against the wall. Steam curled around us in violent waves, dripping from my bare skin onto his tunic as I pressed the shaving knife to his throat. Helion did not fight me, just rested his hands gently on my bare hips. His storm-grey eyes locked onto mine, something dark and knowing flickering behind them. His chest rose beneath me in slow, measured breaths.

“The day you fell in love with the Commander, I discovered that hearts don’t stop when they are broken. They simply learn to bleed forever. So go ahead,” he said, the gravel in his voice deepening. “Drive the blade between my ribs, sunshine. I’ll thank you for letting me be close enough to bleed for you. It’ll be less painful than the lifetimes I spent without you.”

I couldn’t bear to hear another sweet word spill from his venomous lips.

Rage tore through me, rising like the surge of the sea during a storm. I slashed the blade across his chest. “Stop!”

His head tipped back against the wall, a guttural moan tearing through his chest.

“I hate myself for every moment you endured chained and tortured,” he said. Not a hint of his usual charm or sarcasm lingered in his tone. “Let me take your anger.”

Black blood sprayed against the pristine white fabric of his tunic, soaking through it in a dark, blooming stain as the knife sliced through his flesh. Pain flared across my own chest a heartbeat later. I gasped, though the agony was only a dull echo of what it should have been. He was shielding me from the worst of my own violence even while I carved into him.

The realization only made something inside me twist harder.

A low sound rumbled from his throat, eyes darkening as he watched me with hooded eyes.

His blood spraying me with every violent slash.

Warmth tingled against my skin instantly, swimming inside my veins in a wave of arousal.

It soaked into my chest, sharp enough to make my breath hitch.

“You enjoy being hurt?” I spat, pushing the point of the shaver’s blade against the opposite side of his chest, enough to pucker the skin.

His throat bobbed beneath my gaze before his head tipped back against the wall with a rough exhale.

He dragged his gaze over my face, sinking towards my blood-splattered breasts with something dangerously close to reverence. “And I am depraved, Lyra. Of course I like it.” A dark smile ghosted across his mouth, his dimples flashing above the sharp cut of his jaw.

I let out a wounded noise, something between a strangled gasp and a sob, as I slashed the blade through his skin in an onslaught of shallow cuts.

Thin lines split across his chest, black blood spilling over the ruined white fabric now hanging from his body. The tunic quickly became little more than shredded cloth clinging to blood-slick skin.

Helion never tried to stop me. He stayed perfectly still beneath me, storm-grey eyes heavy-lidded as they tracked every frantic movement I made as if he were drinking it all. Every shake of my hand. Every ragged breath tearing from my lungs. Another cut opened beneath the blade.

Warmth surged through the bond so intensely it made my stomach twist. Arousal sank into my veins as his hardness pressed insistently against me beneath his trousers. He pushed himself against the sensitive flesh between my thighs, growing harder with every slash of the knife as though my rage only fed whatever twisted thing lived inside him.

I finally pulled back enough to see the damage I had inflicted. “Helion…” I breathed, horror and fury tangling inside me, twisting into a shame so deep it made my eyes sting.

“Riven,” he corrected, a quiet groan threading through the word. I ignored him, staring at what I’d done.

I’d cut him so many times there was no skin left untouched. My naked body was drenched in his blood, it clung to my skin, dripping down my exposed flesh in slow, obscene trails. Gods… this was depraved. What kind of monster could do this and enjoy it?

A broken sound tore from my throat as his words echoed through my head. He was right.

That darkness I used to feel clawing at me from the outside… it wasn’t separate anymore. It was me.

Was I truly the thing the Iron Guards feared? But they were his creations. His soldiers.