'Who are you, people?' I wanted to scream. 'Who are you and why are you here? Why are you doing this?'

Unlike my feet that were forcefully moving, my lips stayed frozen. Walking into ruins. Fires dying out now that the battle had been lost. Unknown faces that I was seeing for the first time. Faces that I knew all too well. Smiling faces as if what these people saw was something that filled their hearts with happiness.

My own was breaking apart.

So much death. Everywhere I went. Everything I did. It was all I could see in the end.

An ending. A bloody, horrid ending that made me want to scream on top of my lungs, blame it all on Her.

My cruel Moon.

My hands chained behind my back. Steel instead of silver. Wondering where they found those as I watched the people who gave me shelter being relieved of their lives. Only those who didn't fight would live. Only those who accepted their fate would live.

Life that was not a life. The life of a slave. The fate of the defeated.

"Such a nice place. The magicals did a very good job at finding this secluded land, don't you think, Scarlet?" Sitting next to me, the gun safely tucked away under her jacket, she wouldn't even look away when she spoke to me.

I hated listening to her voice, the contempt in it as she kept trying to start a conversation with me after bringing me here to witness what her people did to mine.

Turning away from her, I watched the wildings drag another one of the remaining magicals to the pyre in the heart of the camp. It was the last fire that had been left burning after the tents had gone down to ashes.

The heavy smell of smoke, death and debris could be still scented in the air, such a strong odor that it made you choke on your breath.

"We have been looking for this place for so long, Scarlet. It was a pure luck that we found it now but I'm so glad that we did. And not just the place but you too. I'm going to put you both into good use..." she trailed off then, a second later, heaved out a deep sigh.

"It's been so long," she mumbled as the person in front of the pyre went to his knees. She then gave the wildlings holding the man a nod and he was taken away, this time to be replaced by a woman.

In a string the magicals kept coming, people displayed in front of her for her to decide what to do with them but soon after the first of them had been killed and thrown into the flames the others had learned to take a knee instead of try and fight.

What was the point in fighting now when we were all helpless to turn the tables? Fighting them meant death so why would we fight? Why would we let them take more lives than they already had?

It was perplexing too. The magicals who were people with abilities, who could do so many things no ordinary person could, how did these animals defeat such people?

"I know what you are thinking, Scarlet," the woman went on as if the long minutes of silence had never been there while we had watched the wildlings take up one and then another person to stand a few steps from where we sat.

Not much farther away, I could see the people I had considered my family once but turned to be the exact opposite. Cole, Micah, Hunter and Jazmine. Adam was the only one missing from their group as they too attentively observed the scene.

"You are thinking about how unfair this is, aren't you? The woman wearing your mate's mark came back to ruin yet another thing in your life," she said, her words making me turn my eyes back to her.

It was exactly what she was doing to me. They were.

"You probably thought that you would come here, master your mojo and then hunt me and my people down so you can get your revenge for what we did to you. Am I right?"

"You said you knew what I was thinking." I pointed out.

"Come on, girl. You do realize I'm being nice here. With some help, I can dive right in your mind and find out if I'm right in my assumption or not, but I'm holding myself back from doing it. We have a long way ahead of us so why not get comfortable with each other?" She smiled. The kind of smile that made me wish my hands were not bound by steel but free so I could strangle the life out of her.

"A long way ahead of us? Get comfortable with each other?" I echoed back. She nodded.

"You have to be kidding me!"

"I'm dead serious." She chuckled, then tilted her neck and pointed at her mark. "This, do you know what it means, Scarlet?"

"My mate is a fucking cheater?" I opted, remembering that night when he marked her and the heartbreak that came with it. I'd tried not to think about it. It was like a wound I ignored to prevent more pain and with the course of events after, it had been easy to do it.

Now, having it shoved in my face, I could remember it even if I didn't wish to.

"Alright, I'll be honest with you, Scarlet. It wasn't him who did this. You have Cole to thank for this one since he was controlling your mate at the time the mark was placed on me. But it was for your own good--"

"For my own good?" Was she for real?

Just then, I was sure I was not just looking but glaring at her. My gaze wouldn't move away even when I could hear the screams of someone nearby and the growls of the wildlings who were now doing what they were best at.

Though, in truth, it probably wasn't her statement that had me keep my attention on her and away from the wildlings and their crafty workings.

"Please, don't... please... what are you..."

Drifting in and out of my mind that was trying to deafen the side noise, the screams kept coming.

"You are meant to do great things, Scarlet. You are meant to have so much power and sharing a bond with someone like me is going to assure that you do."

"Please..." Just a whisper.

"This is what this mark means. It's connecting the two of us through your mate and will do so for as long as we three live."

"But Regan and I died."

She shook her head. "You returned. You proved me right, not in the way I expected, but you still proved me right and that's what counts. It was my test for you, Scarlet. The final proof I needed from you. Now," - she lifted her hand, gripped my jaw with her fingers and turned my head - "watch."

A male figure that stood up next to a female I had seen a couple of times in the camp. The girl shaking on the ground didn't look to be more than twenty years old. The man, however, I didn't know. All I could see from him was a dark shape that hung above the girl. A shape wrapped in darkness.

"What is this?" I asked her.

The man kneeled down next to the girl, her body suddenly turning frantic as her hands flew to that shaded face and tried to push the man away. His own hands rose to position themselves on the girl's shoulders, then with a sudden jerk of his body, he sat on top of her as she was forced lay down.

"Please, let me go! Let me go!"

Removing his hands from her, slithering their way to her chest, ripping the cloth to expose it to his sight and ours.

"Please..."

One strike, the word dying in the silence that followed the moment his hand drove right into her chest, my lids closing, wishing not to see, to unsee this horror that unfolded right in front of my eyes.

"Watch and see!" The command came and with it spoken aloud my body no longer obeyed my will.

Hurting, my eyes wouldn't close. My mind wouldn't shut down. She hadn't left a space for deviation in her order.

I had to watch. And I had to see.

The sound of flesh being torn. The crack of bones breaking from the force of the man who ripped that heart out of the chest. The girl was still watching. I could see her lips trembling, her eyes blinking, her body shaking. She was still alive.

With a heart missing from her chest, she was still alive and watching. Doing nothing to stop it but watching. Like me.

"Why are you doing this? Why do you want me to see it?"

I tried to remember the woman's name. Leila. It was Leila, the woman who wore my mate's mark and claimed we were bonded together because of that mark.

The man stood up to his feet, leaving the girl with a stolen heart laying on the ground and turned toward us. A second later, he was already walking toward us, the heart in the palm of his hand beating in rhythm with his approaching steps.

Beating when there was no reason for it to keep doing it.

Stopping right in front of us, the man held his hand in front of my companion. "Mistress Leila," he said softly, confirming my assumption that he was a male indeed.

She took the offering and a nod his way later, turned toward me.

"It's my gift for you, Scarlet," she told me and pressed her lips to the heart.

Light seeped through the piece of flesh, light that drifted into her parted lips. Warmth I could feel pouring inside me. Was it the connection with her that let me feel it?

A gift.

A life that she took.

A soul that she drank straight from the heart.

Everything was silent. The screaming I could hear was all in my head. It was the dead girl's voice.