Jill X Nemesis Novels & Stories

There was a pause, and then Helena laughed, low and unafraid, and I understood again why I loved this woman. "A machine," she said. "Thirty years dead and still spiteful. Very well. Then it has made its first error, child, because it opened with me, and I keep everything. Every document it just weaponised, I hold the context for. Send Lydia. We will answer its lie with a longer truth." But when the call ended, my father spoke from the back seat, and his voice was grave. "It did not err," he said. "Understand what you just saw. The Engine did not attack Helena because she is vulnerable. It attacked her because she is your structure. Think, Elara.

Her face had softened in sleep, the sharp edges of resolve smoothed just enough to remind him of who she had been before everything calcified into silence, protocol, and careful obedience. This was not the woman he was supposed to despise. That was the problem. She had cheated. That fact was immutable. She had betrayed him with the same man who had hollowed him out years earlier, the same man whose name still tasted like rot when Adrian allowed himself to think it. Jaden had not merely been a lover in the past. He had been a parasite. A man who took pleasure in destabilizing people, who mistook control for intimacy and chaos for devotion. And Lena had gone back to him.

I stepped back before she could touch me. “Don’t you dare,” I warned her. “I don’t belong to you anymore.” She looked as though I’d slapped her. “I stopped being yours the day I realized love shouldn’t feel like walking on broken glass.” “You destroyed an innocent woman’s life because you were jealous. How pathetic.” “Jealous?” She laughs humourlessly. “I’m not jealous of that girl, whatever her name is,” she said, waving a dismissive hand through the air as though she were shooing away a fly.

I still didn’t understand how they had so much hope considering the pitiful scores on the board. Grabbing my water bottle, I squirted some into my mouth. But the second I lowered it, a shadow fell over me. Oh for fucks sake. “You know,” My worst nightmare drawled from the other side of the board. “There’s a way to make this more interesting.” I ignored him. Maybe if I pretended he wasn’t there, he’d finally crawl back into whatever rich-kid shithole he’d escaped from. No such luck. He was just as persistent as he’d been in the earlier face-off.

They bounced on their chairs “I bet I took after his handsomeness” “If you took after him then I guess he's not even handsome at all,” Karin said, carefully maintaining the composure she had even after dropping a bomb. “You!” Josh packed a handful of eggs and was going to throw it at Karin but I quickly held his wrist. “Stop it” he recoiled but not without glaring at his sister.

Sir Malik replied before Lady Nerida would, because she was already sobbing quietly. Could the signal be when Lena howled? Is that what she meant? “Then how sure are you that we wouldn't exploit your blood, considering all you've just told us?” I asked with a raise of my brow, but his expression did not even change. Lady Nerida replied this time, “We have another talent, discerning. Whenever someone has ill intent towards us, we would know. And if someone has pure intentions towards us, we will also know. That's how we make friends.”

The ground seemed to shift underneath me when I saw my husband on top of another woman, on our bed, the same bed he wouldn't even hold me on. I put my hand over my mouth and walked in, each step heavier than the last. He was breathing unevenly as he moved faster in and out of her. The woman was moaning and dipping her nails into his back. That must hurt, but Nicholas didn't seem to care. My chest tightened painfully that I wished I hadn't walked in that door, more painful from being jealous of this woman. Nicholas was so lost in pleasure that he didn't even notice me coming in. He probably won't know if the world is crumbling right now.

She threw herself into Giselle’s arms, sobbing and pointing back toward the dark window where a tall, thin shadow was standing against the moon. "He is right there behind the glass and he is whispering my name in a way that makes my blood turn into ice inside my very veins. Please do not let him take me back to that place where the sun never shines and where everyone is a slave to his terrible hunger for power," Jillian cried. She hid her face in Giselle’s neck, her whole body trembling with a terror that made the Queen growl deep in her throat with a sound of pure protection.

I want to ask how he knew they were evil, but I already know the answer. Instincts. The same way I healed him all the times he was poisoned. "All of them," he says earnestly. "Deserved Judgment. I am Nemesis. Cleansing the kingdom is what I'm put here to do, and I know evil when I see it. I would never harm an innocent or anyone working for the good of the kingdom. I would never visit death on an ordinary, well meaning subject. My Gamma and Beta? They don't know that they know, but they do. They have seen me in action. And I have never attacked them, Kerris. My doctor? These are all friends. Good people."