Page 128 of Blooms of Darkness

“I need you to kill me.”

I stepped back from the king immediately. He was mad. Something in his sickness had seeped too far into his mind if he thought asking for death made sense as a solution.

“Your Majesty?” I asked cautiously.

“I am centuries your elder, Kade. I know right now my mind is my own. I need you to kill me, now, before Casimir has any chance of taking even a bit of my power. Before Andras can use me like a puppet to his whim.” He focused his stern gaze on me, unyielding.

Unflinchingly firm in this request.

“I can’t do it,” I answered. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”

He took a step toward me, and for once, I walked away from a fight. I wouldn’t go through with his request.

“You must. I’m dying, anyway, and if they are anywhere near me when I do, they’ll take my magic, and I will not be able to stop them. If we manage to hold the palace today, then they’ll find another time. This is the best chance we’ve got at stopping them. No guards around. No one to know where I am. It must be now.”

My lip curled in disgust. “You understand what you’re asking of me? I don’t kill for fun.”

“You will do this.” He raised his voice slightly. His piercing eyes revealed the knowledge that his impending death lay before him. “For Illiana, you’ll do this. You think I don’t know when someone is hopelessly in love?” He scoffed. “I’m married to my mate. Trust me when I say, I know true love.”

“She’s not my mate,” I said, shutting down thoughts of how much my shadows reacted to her. The feel of her. This wasn’t the time. Mates didn’t exist anymore. I would know. My knowledge of what truly happened with the dark ones far exceeded what anyone here could possibly fathom.

It was how I knew what he said couldn’t be true.

Mates were part of the original sacrifice.

So how was the king convinced his queen was his mate?

“There haven’t been mates in millennia,” I retorted.

The king smiled, holding a hand over his heart. “I would have shouted it from the rooftops of every city in Brookmere that myQueen was mine if I could have. There’s Fate magic at work here, boy. Until this moment, I’ve never been able to speak the words out loud. Therearestill mates. The queen is mine. She ismymate.” The king’s eyes turned glassy with tears as he squeezed my arm.

Perhaps love would be enough to get this ridiculous notion from his mind. He couldn’t possibly have to die right now. Not by my hands.

“And you’d leave her?” It was low, but I grasped at whatever I could to change his mind. I couldn’t kill him and think Lana would ever come with me.

And I needed her to come with me. It was the whole reason Storm and I were here.

For her. For a queen.

“I’d protect her with my life, gladly knowing that when her time comes, we’ll be together with those who’ve gone before us,” he said. “Time runs thin. You must do this, Kade Blackthorn, and you must do it now.”

“No.” I turned, heading toward the doors. “Find someone else. It will not be me. I will guard you here, but I will not kill you.”

Swords and shouts drew closer.

“He will come for her.” The king barely whispered, but it echoed through my body like an explosion. I looked over my shoulder at the man, at his lips pressed in a grim line.

“He will use my power to bend her to his will. He will not do so kindly. He will take her and try to break her.”

“No,” I growled. “He will not get anywhere near her. Not with any power. Never again. He. Will.Not.”

The king walked slowly now, moving just as I’d spotted him staggering across the pavilion. His hunched shoulders betrayed him as he shuffled forward, falling as I grabbed onto him. “I don’t have long. There is a letter in my pocket. Give it to her onceyou ensure my life is gone. You must make sure I’m dead and gone, with no chance of being revived, before you leave.”

I reached where he’d indicated and pulled out a parchment sealed with his golden royal crest.

“She loves you,” I said. “She will not do well losing you.”

But my words lacked conviction, even if they were true. He’d succeeded in hitting me where it counted. The thought of Andras getting anywhere near Lana caused the battle inside of me against the king’s wishes to falter.

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