Page 51 of Haunted

Yes.

So you chose me as your rider? I ask. Why?

To carry on in his name. To honor his sacrifice. He had freed me.

So my soul hadn’t called to you upon my birth. A deep ache fills me. My dragon had never truly been mine.

It doesn’t change my love for you, Caedryn.

“Has Neifion told you everything?” the empress asks.

“Why not stop the resistance, then?” I ask. “Why carry on all these years if you knew what was happening?”

“Oh. Why take away all the toys?”

I nearly choke. “Toys! That’s all we are to you.”

“That’s right. Pieces in a game. You were warned. Weren’t you? But you just couldn’t help yourself because you believed you fell in love.”

I didn’t fall in love.

“Are you denying the things you felt?” I ask. “Are you saying that what we had was nothing?”

“I can’t feel love.”

“Your mother. You love her. It broke you to torture her. You cried in my arms.”

The empress grabs my hair and yanks my head back. Her eyes are round and bulging. “You are mistaken.”

“You’re lying. I’ve seen you soften. I’ve seen your resistance melt away. You are nothing but a woman, power be damned. On the inside you are as vulnerable as the next woman.”

“I wouldn’t jump to such conclusions if I were you.” She releases my head after a final yank.

“Admit it!”

She stands and looks out over the volcanic mountain. “There is nothing to admit.”

“You are lying to yourself.”

She addresses me, properly, as the fierce empress I’m accustomed to, as if our conversation about feelings never happened. “As it stands, you and your dragon are traitors.”

“What will you do with us?”

“Death doesn’t quite fit the crime, does it, Caedryn? You would like a punishment fit for the crime. That’s what you’ve always said. What would be your counsel?”

I close my eyes and remain silent. It doesn’t matter what I say. She will do to me whatever she wishes.

“Remember when I asked you about the Great Divide? We don’t know how wide it is,” she says. “No one can see beyond it. No one can discern beyond its center. It might just be an eternal abyss.”

I wait for the inevitable with a blank face. I won’t give her the satisfaction of my fear.

“Exile, Caedryn. Into the Great Divide.”

“That holds no fear for me.” The only fear that holds me is knowing that I failed, that the empress is forever the Vessel.

“No?” She pulls a blade from its sheath. Eighteen inches of silver death. Maybe she’ll show mercy and shove the blade into my chest instead of exiling me.

Neifion rises, suddenly free of his bonds. My heart is hopeful for one second as he rears up. He will take me into exile. We will be away from here but together.

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