Page 91 of The Dragon King

“I’ve been miserable all by myself, and you seem perfectly fine.”

“I haven’t felt this shitty in a long time.”

I felt myself step back, wanting to dismiss his ire as well as his emotion. My eyes shifted away because it was painful to look at him and know he was no longer mine. “I’m not coming with you.”

“Youarecoming with me.”

“Then you’ll have to make me,” I snapped. “Because I don’t want to see or speak to you if I don’t have to. And if you don’t want tolook like the biggest asshole in the world in front of Macabre and his kin, then you’ll just go.”

His eyes contained his rage, building up further because it had nowhere to go. “I never said I didn’t want to be with you.”

“I know what you said. I’m someone you fuck but not someone you marry?—”

“That is not what I said.” He raised his voice so loud that it drew attention from the nearby elves as they dismounted their horses and prepared to return to the forest. He looked so angry, he was on the verge of unleashing his army of the dead to rip me apart.

“But I know it’s what you meant.”

His eyes shifted back and forth between mine at lightning speed. “I will die in this battle?—”

“If you really believed that, you would never let me go. You would hold on to me so tight, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Soon, you’ll be King of the Southern Isles and the Northern Kingdoms, and I’m not good enough to be your wife?—”

“I told you Vivian was of low stature, and I married her anyway.”

“You loved her, and you don’t love me,” I said. “That’s the difference.”

His face turned beet red like he was so mad he might do something he would regret. The veins popped in his forehead like rivers on a map. The fire in his eyes burned so brightly, it produced heat. He trembled slightly, all of his rage packed inside his body and dying to burst out. “Maybe what we had wasn’t real for you to think so little of me. For you to assume that I would treat you like some whore who got too attached. To ever think, for a fucking second, that I don’t care about you.”

I did my best to fight the tears that wanted to bleed from the wound in my chest.

He continued to tremble like he was about to strike me.

His words hurt me. They hurt me when they should provoke nothing.

He abruptly turned around and walked off. Moved through the sea of people to where Khazmuda waited in the field. His eyes were on Talon like he watched the entire thing, aware of Talon’s pounding rage through their connection.

Talon climbed up Khazmuda's side quicker than I’d ever seen him, and then Khazmuda launched from the ground and into the sky at breakneck speed. Then they were gone…turning into a speck within seconds because Khazmuda flew like he feared for his life.

I stood there alone…and felt my soul crack in two.

Chapter 17

Talon

Despite the length of my absence, everything remained in order. Commander Navarrese had continued to run my affairs in my absence and give no indication that I’d left my throne. “Prepare the armies for departure. We set sail when the ships are ready.” Once I’d become king, I’d ordered the manufacture of enough galleons to carry my entire army across the sea. When I’d made that demand, Commander Navarrese had looked slightly puzzled but obeyed the order. It took a long time to build that number of ships, and I was glad I hadn’t dragged my feet on it. Otherwise, this battle would have been delayed even longer. “And I need to speak to the blacksmith.”

“Right away, Your Majesty.” He gave a slight bow then left the room.

I sat behind the desk and looked at all the matters that required my attention and realized none of it mattered. Not a single scroll. Not a single complaint from one of the stewards or the Scion Priest in his church to the west.

Nothing mattered—because I finally had what I’d wanted all these years.

Who would oversee all this nonsense when I was dead? I didn’t know. Perhaps it would be Calista since she was the heir to Scorpion Valley and I had already slain all of King Theodore’s kin. Or perhaps it would be Queen Eldinar, extending her borders to the south and ruling over the humans as well as the Southern Isles. Either one was a good choice.

Calista would marry and pass her bloodline through her children… And I couldn’t finish the thought. Because Calista would only marry for love, and that would mean she loved someone other than me.

I thought I was too angry to care, but perhaps there wasn’t enough anger to ever stop me from caring.

The blacksmith entered and disrupted my thoughts. “You called, Your Majesty?”

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