The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl Chapter 43: Forty Three

Valka

Lilith didn’t kill .

I stagger against the snow on shaky feet, breathing in the freezing air, and my body trembles from exhaustion. The binds around my wrist scrape my skin raw and I grimace as Morrigan kicks my shin, sending sprawling into the mud. "Move, bitch."

I might have laid right there, out of spite, if every resistance I gave didn’t earn Evadne another punch to the face.

Whatever she had planned didn’t work. Her left eye is punched shut, her lips cut. Her--my leather, is torn up in different vital places, like she had been carved up with a blade, though the skin underneath retains only a faint bruising. An arrow is lodged in her shoulder and her body is soaked in blood, her dark hair matted with it.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what the fault with her planning was. She hadn’t accounted for the fact that Lilith and Morrigan might have made an alliance. And she’d walked straight into a trap, dressed up as .

My fault.

Everything lately seems to be my fault sohow.

Our group is a large one, considering the announcent an hour ago that there were only ten of us left. Six dead. Three sowhere else, hidden from Lilith while the rest defer to her like she’s already been crowned queen and them, her happy pawns.

It does make sense that they would. Best to be the one beating the ’hostages’ than be the ’hostage’. Either way, none of it explains why Lilith had sheathed her sword, rather than slitting my throat with it. She hasn’t so much as looked at in the hours since we began our long trek up the mountain.

Maybe she was saving the spectacle for killing for the grandest? Maybe she got a sick thrill from having her prey stew and fidget with the idea of death, growing inevitably anxious about it before she granted it. I didn’t get it. And I hated not knowing. Not knowing what to expect. Not knowing ’when’ to expect.

I spit grit from my mouth, glaring up at Morrigan. "Maybe tell where you’re dragging first. Then I’ll consider being your good little bitch."

Morrigan golden skin ripples into a snarl, fist curling, but Lilith’s hand lands lightly on her shoulder.

"Stand down, Ashwynd. You’ll have your turn."

Stepping forward regally, Lilith drops into a low crouch. Her jade green eyes, a lighter shade Ilya’s are sohow filled with more darkness than I could possibly wrap my mind around. She cocks her head in a predatory manner, nostrils flaring as they settle on my collar, as though she can see the mark lurking under the fabric.

"I’ve never seen the need to divulge details to the dead," she says. Her voice is soft, almost tiny, like a breath of ash on the wind. Deceptive. Misleading. "But I suppose I could make an exception."

Her nails coated in a deep shade of red that looks like blood twirls playfully around a blade. "The tasks have remained unchanged in the years since the first Selection. A beast to be slaughtered, it’s hide presented to the King. This Selection’s task, however, was changed at the King’s behest. I hadn’t understood why. Until last night." She stares at her delicate fingers, so unlike my calloused ones. "My fire may burn hotter than the rage of a roaring lion, but I do not have steel in my blood."

My brows furrow in confusion. Her words sound like a whole bunch of jargon to .

Seeing my confusion, she smiles, peering down her nose like I am a foolish child. "I know who and what you are, Lyra Nythorn. The King might dress you up and teach you to mimic our ways, but you’re still a leech, like the rest of your kind. A leech who has seduced the King into shielding her from imdiate death." She stares at my neck with such hostility, I know she imagines snapping it in half. "The first queen, Sorscha Ironfang’s sword hasn’t been removed from that stone for decades, because only one with the steel in their blood may remove it."

"Steel in...their blood..." I echo.

Lilith nods. "You are Ironfang. You will get it out of the stone and hand it to . Then, I will gift you the death you deserve and deliver your head to His Majesty myself."

Ah, well. That explains it.

I swallow, forcing my voice to remain steady, even if I feel anything but. My lips move faster than my brain, carving an even deeper grave. "If you’re going to kill anyway, there’s no use in getting you the sword."

It’s getting tiring, having everyone trying to bully into doing things I don’t want to, just because they think they can.

She grabs my chin, forcing my face to hers. "There is," she says with lethal softness. "To . I could kill you all and erge the sole survivor of the Selection. But it isn’t quite the sa as winning. Besides, it takes more than violence and brute force to rule a kingdom. Killing every heir won’t get the support I need when I eventually take the throne by the King’s side." Sothing obsessive and hateful enters her gaze, claws extending from her nails and tearing painfully into my cheek. "I have no idea what it is about n like him that make him settle for such, ordinarily, plain won. What is it she had that I didn’t? What is it she has that I still don’t?"

If this were any other day, I might’ve told her she had it all wrong. Lucien and I can barely tolerate each other, much less love each other. He’d sooner fling himself off a cliff than marry for affection. Our bond was never about want. It was survival. Mine and his. My future. His kingdom.

So I et Lilith’s gaze, cold and steady, and say, "Maybe try a hobby that isn’t obsessing over a man who doesn’t want you."

I let every mory of his mark burn across my face, of the mont I’d walked into that dream. I see my eyes through Lilith’s green ones and they are hooded with imagined heat. Wistful. Knowing. Needing. "Luke likes his won detached. Uninterested."

I lick my lips, slowly with heavy insinuation.. "I would know. He gave his mark. I didn’t even want it."

Evadne, despite her splitting injuries, hides her chuckle behind a derisive snort. Soone else laughs, unreserved, not at all bothering to hide their mockery.

Lilith stares at for a mont, that preternatural stillness about her sending my nerves into a maddening frenzy.

Then she smiles, darkly. "You think this is about him."

Her claws retract as she lets go of my chin, only to trail her fingers lightly down my neck, her touch deceptively gentle. I flinch when they hook into the collar of my clothes, and before I can move, she rips the fabric open to my collarbone in a single, effortless tear.

"I want to see," she whispers, with a barely contained giggle. "what he marked as his."

Her palm slams flat against my neck, directly over the symbol of Lucien’s claim. Pain explodes through like liquid fire as her magic digs in, not cutting flesh, but burning through it. My mark sears and screams. The air itself warps around us, thick with the stench of scorched skin and iron.

I thrash, but her other hand pins by the throat with cruel, unshaking ease.

"What the hell are you doing, Lilith?!" Evadne snarls, shoving forward, only to be stopped by Morrigan’s boot to her spine. "You cannot use your powers! You break the rules!"

"But I am not using them," Lilith tuts innocently. "We Blackspires burn hot. It is not my fault her skin reacts to my bare touch like this."

"You feel that?" she breathes, eyes wild as an unholy scream rips from . "I’m peeling him off you. Piece by piece. Until nothing of him is left. Until you are nothing." As if to enunciate every word, the heat tripped and I feel my skin scald. lt. It is not the pain of being run through or beaten to a pulp. Neither is the the pain of being whipped. It is sothing worse, like the flas of hell lting my bones to liquid.

Black swarms my vision, the pain nearly swallowing whole.

Then she lets go.

I crumple to the snow, clutching at my chest, trembling as the cold white sizzles against my ruined skin. My mark is still there, but faint, ghostlike, raw as an open wound. It’ll heal, but gods, it burns.

Lilith runs a claw over my cheek. "The next ti you speak to like that again, girl, you will watch sweet Eva burn to ashes for your sake. And when her screaming stops, you’ll hear your own."

My chest rises and falls as I stare up at her, watching her straighten and saunter ahead of the group in a graceful walk, every head bowed in deference to her, and I can’t help thinking Lucien should’ve just made her queen.

It would’ve spared us all the terror.