My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 165

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Irina

“Sera... why?”

The words felt like they were made of dry sand, scratching their way out of my throat. I sat there, pinned to that wooden vanity chair, while the world turned into a blurred mess of grey stone and red stains. Every breath I took was a fight. The knife in my side was a hot coal that hummed every time my heart beat, sending little jolts of electricity up to my skull.

Sera didn't answer right away. She just stood in the doorway, wrapped in Fenris’s massive arms, looking at me like I was a puzzle she had already solved and thrown in the trash.

I looked at her, and for a second, I wasn't in this freezing, blood-soaked room anymore. I was back in the palace in Valdris. I remember a morning, years ago, when Lyra was still just a little thing. She had come running into my room at dawn, crying so hard she was actually choking on her own spit.

She kept screaming that her hair was gone. I’d pulled her into my lap and looked. It was a disaster. Someone had taken a pair of dull shears to her head while she slept, chopping it off in jagged, ugly chunks. It didn't look like a human had done it; it looked like a giant rat had chewed through it in the dark.

Not five minutes later, Sera had come running in. She looked so worried, her face all twisted up with concern. She’d rushed over to Lyra, shouting about who could have done such a thing, asking if she was okay. But I saw it. Just for a second, a tiny flash of mockery in her eyes. Lyra was too young to see it, but I wasn't.

The two of them had been fighting the day before. I couldn't even remember what it was about—some toy or a seat at the table—but I had given Sera a sharp warning to leave her sister alone.

It wasn't until Lyra had gone back to her room that I’d cornered Sera. I put the analysis out there, connecting the dots of her temper and the shears I’d found hidden under her rug. Sera hadn't even denied it. She’d just looked at me with that same cold, terrifying stillness she was wearing right now and walked away.

That was the person these idiots were playing with. Sera wasn't a victim. She was a weapon that had been waiting for a reason to fire.

Sera’s eyes were raw. Red-rimmed and puffy. Had she been crying? I wondered for a second if she actually felt something for me, or if she was just mourning the fact that she had to get her hands dirty.

Before I could make up my mind, she broke away from Fenris. She ran forward, her hand clamped over her mouth like she was trying to stifle a moan or keep herself from vomiting.

She whimpered as she reached the chair. Her hands were shaking, hovering over the iron hilt of the dagger buried in my ribs, but she couldn't bring herself to touch it. Her eyes were already shedding tears again, big, fat drops that hit the shredded silk of my dress.