Page 64 of Crownless King

I’d given you my trust, and you broke it. Shattered it to pieces, along with my heart.

My chest tightened, making it too painful to even draw a breath. A hot tear rolled from under my closed eyelid.

“How could you, Voron?” I whispered, letting the pain take me. “What have you done?”

ChapterEighteen

SPARROW

Aknock jolted me out of the daze. I felt so groggy, it took me a while to even realize that the knock was on the invisible door of the invisible wagon inside which I was hiding.

It was dark around me. The sky above had turned that muddy gray color it took at early sunrise when it was densely overcast with thick, dark clouds.

Was it morning already?

Had I fallen asleep?

A headache pounded inside my skull. My face felt hot and puffy, and my eyes sore, as if I cried all through the night. But somehow, after all that crying, I must’ve managed to fall asleep.

A dark figure stood in front of the invisible door. Hunched over and shrouded in a dark-gray cloak head to toe, it looked exactly like the old woman who had snatched me off the bridge.

But I’d seen her being shot and killed just a little while ago.

Did she come back to life?

Or was it her ghost?

Both prospects were equally disturbing. Especially, since she’d never told me what she wanted with me in the first place. Why did she steal me from the guards?

Apprehension creeped up my spine with chills, jolting me completely awake now. Moving as quietly as possible, I crawled backwards, away from the door.

The woman knocked once more.

“Sova? Are you here?”

It couldn’t be the same woman, then. I distinctly remembered her introducing herself by that name.

Her ghost wouldn’t come here looking for her like that, would it?

She shoved against the door, pushing it open. Breath stuck in my throat as she poked her head in and spotted me.

“And who the fuck are you?” She scowled at me.

Frozen in fear and, frankly, not expecting an ancient fae to have a filthy mouth like that, I just blinked at her in silence.

“Where is Sova?” she demanded, crossing her scrawny arms over her narrow chest.

I kept staring at her. How was I to explain anything to anyone when I myself had no clue what the hell had been happening? My brain had been working way too hard as it was, just trying to think a few moments ahead to keep me alive.

“She… she was killed. Yesterday,” I finally managed to squeeze out through my dry throat.

The old woman moved in menacingly.

“Did you kill her?”

“What? No!” I crab-walked backwards, away from her, until my shoulder hit a hard corner of something invisible inside the wagon. “I’ve never hurt any—” The words stuck in my throat.

I could never honestly claim again that I’d never hurt anyone. King Tiane was dead because of me. I didn’t kill Sova, but Iwasa murderer.

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