Between the Moon and Her Night (Between Life and Death Series Book 3) by Jaclyn Kot

Author:Jaclyn Kot [Kot, Jaclyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Violet Griffin Publishing
Published: 2024-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Moments later, we were standing in my old bedchambers back at the Golden Palace in the Immortal Realm. My room was just how I had left it. I wasn’t sure if Aurelius would have trashed the room in his rage when he’d found out I had fled. But, for some reason, he hadn’t. My traitorous heart—something that was of him, not me—kicked optimistically. I ignored it. That ship hadn’t just sailed—it had sunk into the abyss of never again and go fuck yourself.

Zahra stepped ahead, looking around. “It’s a bit gaudy, isn’t it?”

“Truly, it is.” I answered.

The gold-bricked walls were obnoxiously loud, screaming of Aurelius’s ridiculous amounts of wealth. Then again, that was him. He always wanted people’s eyes on him, to be the center of attention. How I stayed with him for so many years, looking up to him, I did not know.

Zahra continued to walk around as I made my way over to my old closet. Reaching the far end of the room, I dropped to my knees and began reaching behind the densely packed dresses, their scratchy material abrasive against my face. My fingers connected with a small wooden chest. I pulled it out and opened it up. In it were Von’s feathers.

All of them.

Safe.

Happy now? I asked the voice inside.

When it didn’t reply, I took its silence as a good thing.

I closed the lid, grabbed the chest with one hand, and stood up. I started walking towards the door, but stopped in the middle of the room when I reached the slender column that spanned from floor to ceiling.

Fingerprints were etched into the stone pillar. I ran my fingers over them—

A perfect match.

“I told you to hold on,” snarled a woman’s voice in my ear.

“I . . . can’t . . . breathe,” I huffed as I gripped the column, my body on the verge of passing out.

Still, she pulled on the ties of my corset, stitching my lungs closed with each merciless tug. “Well, if you’d quit spending so much time in that damn orchard and more time waist-training, we wouldn’t be having this problem, now, would we?” she growled, her voice as kind as a dagger against my throat. “No wonder the king doesn’t visit your bedchamber anymore.”

I snatched my hand back, breaking free from the memory. There were thousands more like them, some much worse. I stepped away from the pillar, looking around at the room I had spent so much of my life in.

It was filled to the brim with stuffy dresses and rib-breaking corsets. Hundreds of clothing options and not one was tailored to be comfortable. They were meant to restrict. To conform. I realized then how much I hated those clothes. They were the uniform of my oppression. The façade of a perfect, doting wife. A smiling face and an empty head—just how Aurelius wanted me to portray myself to be.

Well, that person was gone now.

But I realized I had never had a funeral for her—for Aurelia.

I ran my fingers over the clothes as I walked, letting my ravenous fire seep beyond the surface of my fingertips.

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