Wrong.
I caught her face again and slammed her skull back against the wall hard enough to crack stone.
“Look at me.”
She did.
She had no choice.
Blood bubbled between her teeth. Her jaw trembled in my hand. Her chest worked too fast, too shallow, body fighting for air around the mess I had made of her mouth.
“You had years,” I said, and every word dragged through me with claws. “Years to answer her. Years to stop. Years to be anything other than the small, jealous, rotten thing you became because another woman existed with power you could not own.”
Her eyes flashed even then.
Hatred.
Still hatred.
Even tongueless, even bleeding, even seconds away from being nothing but meat on chains, she hated Aria more than she feared death.
That settled something in me.
The last thin thread
