The Blood Prince by Ayla Marie

Author:Ayla Marie [Marie, Ayla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ayla Marie

Chapter

Twenty-Four

ELANA

I pace the length of the sitting room as I wait for Byrne to come home. It’s well into the night now, the stars having appeared hours ago. If she’s still with that blood-eyed rat, I’m going to lose it. How could she run to him when I was on the ground? How could I let him knock me down? I rub the new bruise on my jaw, the only evidence of Cassien’s disappointment.

Byrne walks through the door and avoids my eyes as she strips off her cloak.

“Where have you been?” I ask quietly, my worry and anger merging. The adrenaline from the fight has yet to wear off.

“Where do you think, Elana?” she replies dryly, not daring to look at me. “Where is Father?” Byrne walks past me as if I were a ghost, trekking into the kitchen. She steals a roll from the counter and immediately tears into it with the grace of a starved animal.

“Sleeping,” I rage-whisper. She sits down at the table the cooks use to knead dough and finally dares to meet my gaze. We used to spend hours watching Mother cook at this table, standing on our toes to get a peek of her scarred, skilled hands at work. Byrne and I would giggle when she would throw flour at us, the powder floating in the air like a blizzard. We would run around the room like leaves in the wind, trying to step close enough to get a decent handful of the powder to take our revenge. My anger ebbs to the sorrow and grief still fresh all these years later.

“What were you thinking? You could have—would have killed him!” she scolds. I took an extra beating on her behalf when I got home. Cassien was not pleased with her little display. I’ll have to figure out a way to keep them separated until he forgets her betrayal.

“Why is that such a bad thing, Byrne? He’s a blood-eye! He deserves to be burned for all he is!”

“He doesn't even know there are other blood-eyes across the river, Elana! He has no idea who he is! He believes he’s the only one of his kind because no one thinks it right to tell him he has people.” She shakes her head incredulously as fury burns through her whispers. “How could you be so cruel to a person who wants only peace for his family? All they want is to have a home, Elana. A place where they don’t have to worry about getting sliced in the throat!” The words become a tangible entity around me, strangling the air from my lungs.

“You can’t be serious, Byrne?” She crosses her arms, telling me she is very much so as she dares me to push her further. Blood-eyes are the reason we’re confined to this island. Why we are deprived of knowledge and freedom. Decades ago, the gold-eyes tried to gain what we were denied, only to be crushed by a blood-eyed king who banished us to three gold-appointed cities, restricting our every move.

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