Page 121 of The Heir's Bargain

I hadn't even known I had given my heart to someone until it was too late.

Chapter 32

FYNN

The door slammed shut behind me.

"Oh, Fynneares, is that you?"

My steps faltered as my mother's light voice called out from somewhere in the castle.

"Fynneares?" she called again when I had yet to respond.

At last, I grunted, unable to string together a single thought, let alone voice a sentence.

I never wanted to interfere with Dani’s career or make her feel the need to make such a choice. I had never asked her to, yet she had made the choice anyway.

For me, it was never an either-or situation.

Dani might have thought I was overreacting, but I had been studying the Bull King and his movements for over a decade. Based on the little intel we received from our spies in the south, the man was unpredictable. He was conniving and cunning and always one step ahead.

That’s how he was able to break my family the first time.

Every year, my family would go to our summer home for a month to escape the bustle of the capital. In their absence, my parents trusted the advisors to keep the kingdom running.

My father always told us, "Even queens and kings need to live once in a while."

But on that fatal day, we had lived too much. Our walls were down. Caution had been left behind in the castle. At night, the fire rolled over the house, burning anything it could.

As the smoke filled the hallways and slithered beneath the cracks of the doors, wrapping around our lungs, Terin had succumbed to sleep's embrace. Terin still had not gained solid control over his ability at the time. Unlike now, where sleep evaded him, sleep wrapped its heavy tendrils around his ankles, drowning him in its embrace. It took everything I had to drag my brother out of the house as the flames crawled over the building and ate away at its beams and walls.

When we at last made it outside, no one was there.

The smoke had not left my lungs yet, but I had to go back. I tried to go back. But as I ran for the house, the windows shattered as Graeson burst through the doors with my sister clawing at his face. She clawed and bit and scratched, hollering unintelligible words through a tear-stained face.

When she escaped Graeson's hold like the little mouse she was, my sister crawled to the house on her hands and knees. But she was only three and had been inside longer than I had. Her lungs were weak, her body feeble.

She was too slow, too small.

And then the Bull King came. His iron helmet, in the shape of a bull, glowed red and yellow as the flames slashed and roared around him. He was unfazed by the fire as he sped forward on his horse.

Before Graeson and I could process what was happening, the Bull King snatched my sister and threw her atop his black stallion.

I tried to go after her.

I tried to run.

I tried to fight the burning in my lungs.

But I couldn't.

I wasn't quick enough.

I wasn't strong enough.

My sister was taken that night because I had not been enough.

For centuries, our kingdom had been the safest place in Vaneria. Yet, in one night, that safety was obliterated.

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