Page 67 of Kiss of the Dark Elf's Blade

Anger sparks in me, and I have to calm myself down before responding.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about things like that anymore.”

She sighs, and I’m about to ask her what’s wrong before she speaks.

“You really aren’t going to fuck me?”

This time it’s my turn to sigh. She really won’t just let me take care of her.

“I was trying to let you relax after the day you’ve had. I figured sex wasn’t what you needed tonight. Are you telling me I’m wrong?”

“Maybe? I don’t know, I just want to be close to you,” she says, snuggling back against me and letting her soapy head rest on my shoulder.

“Well, then who am I to deny you?” I nip at her ear.

I could never deny this girl anything. She truly is my biggest weakness, but I couldn’t be happier about it. Nothing will ever change that.

30

RIYA

I’m shaking uncontrollably, and no matter how many deep breaths I take, I can’t make myself calm down. But if I don’t get out of here soon, I’m sure I’ll end up dead, like every other human I know. Knew.

Everything that happened tonight was one hundred percent my fault. If I hadn’t told Declan what was going on with Brielle… if I hadn’t led everyone right to her, none of these people would be dead. If I had just minded my own fucking business like Brielle wanted me to all along.

I had no idea that this would happen. I never wanted anyone to get hurt. I truly thought I was helping my best friend at the time.

When I first suspected that Brielle’s secret admirer was a dark elf and that she was entertaining him, I thought she was just being naïve.

I truly thought that, because she was so used to being all alone, growing up with no family and scarce friends, the attention he was giving her was more than she was ever used to. I thought she had fallen for his trap. But I think I underestimated my friend. I think Brielle was a lot smarter than I ever gave her credit for.

How was I supposed to know that this dark elf Brielle has been seeing actually cared about her? That goes against everything I know about the ways the dark elves treat us. It goes against the things I’ve been taught my entire life. The things I’ve seen countless times.

Dark elves don’t protect us, they don’t care about us. They use and kill us. And they don’t have any regrets. We are nothing to them. They are savage killers who only think about themselves.

And yet I just saw one of them slaughter a whole village to protect one human. I misjudged this entire situation, and now I have to deal with the consequences of that. But how?

I’m incredibly sorry for what I did to Brielle, obviously. The way I spoke to her, the things I said when we captured her. The aftermath. But I’m also so mad at her.

None of this is her fault, I fully take that blame. But if she had just been honest with me from the start, we could have avoided all of this. If she had come to me when she found out the person leaving those gifts was a dark elf, if she had told me she was falling for him and that he was good to her? Maybe I would have been understanding.

But I know that isn’t true. I probably would have ended our friendship over it, maybe even still turned her in. And because of that, I deserve whatever comes to me. I’m not a good friend, and I never deserved a friend like her.

Brielle may have lied to me, but I betrayed her. I could have confronted her privately when I saw her in the woods with him earlier. I could have just given her a chance to explain. But my rage and hurt overpowered my rational self, and instead I ran straight to Declan.

Declan who is now dead. I saw Brielle’s dark elf kill him with my own eyes.

I will never forget the look on Brielle’s face when I told her that I was the one who left those threatening notes, and it killed me to see how scared she was at the time of reading them. But I really thought that if I left them, she would think it was the secret admirer and never go back there. I was so, so wrong.

“This is humiliating, how could you humiliate me like this?”

“I don’t think there’s any apologizing for this.”

I force myself to remember some of her last words to me. Suddenly I’m snapped out of my memory by voices nearby.

“Keep looking, I don’t care if it takes all night,” I hear a male voice shout. “Look under everything, behind everything. Find the bitch.”

My blood chills. Fuck, I need to move from this spotnow. But I have no fucking clue where to go. Everything is in ruin.