THE FORSAKEN LYCAN PRINCESS.

CH 14..

The afternoon light streaming into the velvet-draped West Drawing Room was sickly sweet, smelling of jasmine oil, imported plum wine, and the suffocating perfume of the Silverwood elite.

Tanya had gathered four daughters of the territory’s wealthiest lords girls, clad in glittering silks and high-collared fur capes, sipping expensive spiced liquor from crystal goblets. They sat in a semi-circle on the lavish plush couches, their high-pitched, practiced giggles echoing off the high frescoed ceiling.

And I was forced to stand behind them, holding a heavy crystal decanter of dark plum wine like a piece of wooden furniture.

"Oh, her?" Tanya sneered, setting her empty goblet down with a sharp clink on the marble side table and gesturing backward with a careless flick of her manicured wrist.

"Don't mind that thing. She’s just the lower scullery dog. My mother lets her sleep in the cellar so she doesn't stain the upper floors. She's our personal unranked servant, though 'servant' is a bit too generous for a curse who can't even hold a broom straight."

A wave of cruel, melodious laughter rippled through the group.

"Is that really the one people whisper about?" a girl in a rich emerald dress snickered, fanning herself with a lace fan as she looked me up and down with deep revulsion.

"She looks thoroughly ghastly, Tanya. Look at her tunic, it looks like a rag from the rogue camps."

"She smells like wet stone and iron," another Beta girl chimed in, wrinkling her small nose.

"Honestly, Tanya, I don't know how you endure having such a wretched creature in your sight."

I stood perfectly still, my chin held high, my posture straight as an iron rod. Beneath my threadbare tunic, my left arm remained clamped tightly over my ribs, securing the Cresthaven token over my heart. The memory of my mother’s hazel eyes, the golden truth of her love, sat like an impenetrable shield around my soul. Their insults were nothing. They were the shallow buzzing of insects in a garden built on lies.

"All of you, please," a quiet, hesitant voice broke through the cruelty.

It came from the smallest girl at the end of the settee, Lady Aurora, the quiet daughter of Lord Cassian. She looked at my bandaged, bloody right hand and the pale, exhausted hollows of my face with a faint, sorrowful crease between her brows.

"You should be gentle with her... she looks terribly injured. It's not right to torment someone who is clearly bleeding."

Tanya’s face instantly hardened, her blue eyes flashing with sharp, offended arrogance.

"Gentle?" Tanya scoffed, her voice turning icy. "Aurora, you are far too soft. You don't know what this parasite is. She deserves every bit of dirt she walks on."

Tanya snapped her fingers loudly in my face, the sharp sound cracking through the room like a whip.

"Fill my glass, dog. And don't spill a drop, or I'll have Beatrice strip your other sleeve."

I stepped forward in smooth, unhurried silence. The heavy crystal decanter weighed heavily in my hands, sending a sharp, white-hot spike of agony straight through the severed muscle in my bandaged right palm. I reached out with my left hand, trying to maintain my balance while keeping my upper arm pressed tight against my ribcage to hide the token.

I tilted the heavy decanter over Tanya’s delicate silver-rimmed goblet.

The dark plum wine poured out in a steady, crimson stream. But as the liquid reached the rim, a sudden, blinding spasm of pain shot up my right arm, a violent, involuntary contraction of severed nerve endings under intense strain.

My right wrist buckled.

SPLASH.

The heavy crystal bottle slipped slightly, tipping sideways. A massive, dark crimson wave of plum wine sloshed violently over the rim of the glass, spilling entirely across the pristine white, lace-embroidered skirt of Tanya’s imported silk ballgown.

The dark red liquor soaked through the delicate white threads instantly, spreading into a huge, grotesque stain across her lap and running down her knees in thick, dripping drops.

The drawing room fell into an absolute, deathly silence.

The girls gasped, their hands flying to their mouths. Aurora’s eyes widened in sheer terror.

Tanya stared down at her ruined dress, her chest heaving, the blood completely draining from her face before returning in a blinding, furious tide of dark red rage.

She didn't scream. She didn't speak.

Before I could even blink, before a single breath could leave my lungs, Tanya’s right hand flew back and whipped forward in a wild, vicious, absolute arc.

PAAAAAAAACK!

The impact hit my left cheek like a c***k of thunder.

It was a full-force strike delivered with all the supernatural strength of her royal bloodline. The sheer physical violence of the blow sent a blinding burst of white light exploding behind my eyes, I literally saw a dizzying constellation of burning STARS dancing in the pitch-black void of my mind. My head snapped viciously to the right, the copper taste of fresh blood bursting across my mouth as my split lip tore wide open. The force was enough to send me stumbling sideways, the heavy decanter shattering into a hundred glittering shards on the marble floor.

"You filthy, useless, blind WITCH!" Tanya shrieked, her voice echoing off the high walls as she stood up, her chest heaving with psychotic rage.

The world spun around me. My cheek was burning like molten iron, my head ringing with a deafening, high-pitched whine.

For twenty-three years, I had taken the blows. For twenty-three years, I had bowed my head, swallowed the blood, and believed that their violence was the righteous punishment for my existence.

“You were made of love,” my mother’s voice whispered through the ringing in my ears, echoing from the golden pages of the archive.

“Live, my sweet Elara. Live and be whole.”

The darkness inside me shattered.

The twenty-three years of suppressed fear, the cold cellars, the starvation, the boiling broth on my back, the blood on my hands, every single drop of buried rage erupted into a roaring, blinding inferno that consumed my entire soul.

I didn't fall. I didn't cry out.

I planted my bare feet firmly into the cold marble floor. I slowly turned my head back around, wiping a streak of crimson blood from my split lip with the back of my hand.

I looked straight into Tanya’s furious, arrogant eyes and I didn't see a royal princess. I saw a hollow, petty bully standing in the shadow of a queen she could never be.

Before Tanya could process the sudden, terrifying golden flare in my hazel eyes, before she could raise her voice to order the guards, my right body coiled.

Ignoring the agonizing heat in my severed hand, ignoring the raw blisters on my back, I drew my arm back and delivered a strike fueled by two decades of pure, unadulterated vengeance.

THUUUUUUNDERRRR!

My palm slammed into Tanya’s left cheek with the weight of a falling mountain, times two.

The sound of the impact rattled the leaded glass windows of the drawing room. The raw, violent force of the strike shattered the silence, lifting Tanya completely off her feet. She spun through the air, her screaming voice cut short as her body crashed over the marble side table, sending crystal glasses, silver trays, and plum wine shattering everywhere before she slammed hard onto the floor in a heap of ruined silk and blood.

The drawing room went completely, horrifyingly still.

The girls were frozen in pure, unadulterated shock, their mouths hanging open, terror paralyzing their bodies. Aurora clutched her throat, shaking violently.

Tanya lay on the ruined marble, clutching her swollen, bleeding face, looking up at me through a haze of tears with absolute, jaw-dropping terror.

I stood over her in the quiet room, my chest heaving, my right hand dripping blood onto the white silk of her ruined dress, my eyes burning with a dark, lethal fire they had never seen before.