In one fluid movement, he scooped the knife off the forest floor and leaped forward.
Instantly, she sprinted toward him. He stretched out his hands to wrap around her neck and throw her to the ground, but then she was gone—somersaulting over him and racing toward the tree he’d been crouched beside.
He dug his heels into the ground and pivoted sharply, his dragon heart screaming for blood.
She scaled the tree in quick, graceful leaps, but by the time she was halfway up the trunk, he was already behind her. Grabbing her ankles. Flinging her toward the forest floor.
She did a front flip, tucked her head, and dove into a shoulder roll the moment her feet touched the ground.
Kol growled, his collar blazing, the pain wiping out every thought but one: kill his prey.
The girl was up and moving. She grabbed the knife he’d dropped as he scaled the tree and turned to face him.
He loosened his grip on the trunk and slid down it, ignoring the splinters that dug furrows into his bare hands and arms.
The girl flipped the blade around to face him and crouched, ready for his attack. “Just tell me what she did to you. Let me help you. No one has to get hurt.”
She was wrong. He was already hurting, and it wouldn’t stop until she was dead.
He lunged toward her, and she flipped to the side, narrowly avoiding his grasp; but this time, he was ready for her. Spinning to his left, he crashed into her, and they both went down.
She jerked her knees toward her chest, but he leaped on top of her and pinned her. She slashed wildly with the knife. Kol caught her wrist and twisted. She cried out in pain but refused to let go of the weapon.
He bent his face toward her and the fire inside him ignited into something blind. Feral.
Desperate.
Her heart. He just needed her heart, and then all this would stop.
He grabbed the knife by the blade, heedless of the metal’s bite against his skin, of the blood that poured out of his hand. Wrenching it out of her grasp, he raised it above his head and aimed for her heart.
“No!” She raised her hands, palms out, to cover her chest, and the knife ripped into the gloves she wore, leaving a long, jagged tear.
He shoved at her hands, determined to get them out of the way. Once he sliced into her, once he removed her heart, the unendurable agony inside him would stop.
Once he removed her heart. He blinked as the image of his queen pressing her hand against his own chest to tear his human heart free burned in his mind. That was where the pain had started. Not with the girl. With his queen.
Hadn’t it?
The collar whispered, the pain surged, and the memory was gone like it had never existed at all. He cried out in frustration.
“Wait.” The girl lifted her hands again. “Just wait for a moment. Let’s talk about this. Whatever you need, whatever is wrong, I can help.”
He glared at her—this girl, this little, insignificant prey who was keeping him a prisoner of the agony of the collar—and plunged the knife toward her chest.
She deflected it with a sharp blow to his wrist. Off balance, he plunged the knife into the ground beside her, barely missing her. He yanked the knife free, still keeping her pinned as she kicked and struggled.
He was fire, blood, and death.
She was prey.
His pain was about to be over.
The knife streaked toward her heart.
She turned and slammed her hands into his chest.
The bare skin of her palm beneath the tear in her glove touched the bare skin of his chest.
White light exploded out of her hand and arrowed into him. The knife fell from his hands. The fire in his chest quieted. And the pain—oh, thank the skies above, the pain became a muted hum he could almost ignore if he tried.
The girl’s eyes widened as the light found the empty space in his chest where rage existed instead of his human heart. Her magic felt like the comfort of a winter’s fire. Like the purity of a field of unbroken snow. She looked at him like she’d uncovered his truth, and he desperately wished he could ask her to share it with him.
“What has she done to you?”
He didn’t have the words to reply.
He suddenly realized that he was pinning her to the ground. That he’d hurt her wrist when he’d taken the knife from her.
That he’d treated her like prey.
Shame was a live coal lodged in his throat, heating his face and making it nearly impossible to meet her gaze.
What had he done?
I’m sorry. The words came to life in his mind, but his mouth could no longer form them.
She jerked as if he’d struck her, and her hand slipped from his chest. Instantly, the hurt crashed into him, and he doubled over as it stole his breath.
Pain. Nothing but unending agony and the terrible certainty that the only way he would ever be free was if he carved out her heart.
Please don’t. Her voice, soft and certain, filled his mind, lighting a path through the clouds that obscured his memories.
He lifted his face to stare at her.