Page 56 of The Prince's Mage

He said, “Believe me, if I’m right, and today has proven I am, I will make Nikias see it. He would not listen today, but Aimilia and I expected that. He believes anything I show him will be an illusion in an attempt to protect you. But he will listen. He wants my forgiveness too much not to. And when he believes it, he will make our parents see it. We shall have peace.”

The same Nikias that would rather see her dead because she desperately cried out for his brother to save her from the torture he ordered her to be put through? The same parents that struck their own child so harshly, so often, disguising it with his goddess-gifted magic had been his highest priority at the age of five?

Oh. Gavril was a fool of the worst kind.

The same man who looked at her and did not see the duplicitousness in her own eyes, who could not recognize an illusion when it sat right in front of him.

The only peace she would have would be brought through the very same method his parents had tried to employ against hers.

She needed to kidnap Nikias and do it now.

Before she did something she couldn’t take back.

Like falling in love with Gavril.

Because she wasn’t. Not yet. She wasn’t. She wasn’t. She wasn’t—

She was.

No.No… But how could she deny it? It was plain as day, and she was spewing lies from her lips with every breath and every moment was a falsity, but she could not lie to herself a second longer.

The thing that terrorized her worse than the table in her nightmares was his dead body. Because she’d destroyed the tables and she wasn’t going back on them… but Gavril?

Gavril she would lose.

Chapter20

MARCELLA

That night—after Marcella woke up screaming because Gavril’s face had been so horrifically mangled the only way she’d known it had been him was because of his eyes—she hadn’t even been able to get a word out. Gavril just held her, murmuring that she was safe. Eventually, in a low voice, he told her about his graduation tournament at theacademiebefore he became a commander. He wasn’t sure he was going to pass. That he was going to be a mark of shame on his family by being the first royal to fail. But he considered purposefully failing.

Purposefully failing meant he wouldn’t be a commander so they would have to do something else with him. Likely give him a normal combat rank or let him be an academic like he would have chosen to be if he’d been the second-born son of a noble family instead of the royal family.

It meant he wouldn’t have come back to the palace.

At the end of it, he whispered, “But in the end, I made the right choice. I wouldn’t have met you if I hadn’t been a commander. What little I have been able to protect you from, I wouldn’t have even been able to do that if I wasn’t a commander.”

She bit her tongue to keep it from spilling out that her nightmares were only half about herself and half about losing him.

It wouldn’t change anything. She was losing him anyway.

Instead, she whispered, “I—I failed. The test I needed to pass to become a soldier. I didn’t even want to be a soldier.”

Gavril’s hand in her hair stilled. “They forced you to become one anyway?”

That dark tone was back as his other hand found the scar on her side.

“I was not good enough at magic for what I really wanted. I wanted to be one of the teachers for the children of my clan in magic. Unfortunately, I was not a good study. I am not skilled. How could I train strong mages when I was barely one myself? So, they would not even consider me.”

“Marcella—”

But she pressed on.

“I didn’t have any other option left. I had no one left. Being a soldier was the only option I had to stay on the Desero estate. I’d never lived anywhere else. If I didn’t become a soldier, I would have had to go live amongst the Solitus villages. Or—”

She cut herself off.

Gavril shifted his legs, curling them up so she was even closer. He brushed his hand over her side. “Please, do not hide from me. Whatever there is to know, I want to know.”

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