Page 39 of Too Dangerous To Die

His eyes flash. “It’s the only one I’m giving.”

Something cracks inside me. “You dragged me out here. You kept secrets about the Wraithborn. You threw me into a ruin that nearly killed us both. And now you won’t tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I didn’t drag you,” he growls, stepping toward me. “You chose to bind yourself to me. You made that pact.”

“Because I was dying!”

“And I kept you alive!” The words ring out, echoing across the Wastes like a war cry. His voice drops then, raw and low. “And I would do it again.”

I don’t know if it’s fury or grief that clutches my throat.

“What did I see down there?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer.

“Was it a tomb?” I ask. “Or a prison?”

Still, silence.

Something flares in my chest—hot, volatile. “Why is your name carved into a grave, Rhaegar?”

He doesn’t flinch.

But he doesn’t deny it either.

I take a step forward, magic buzzing wild in my fingertips. “Are you already dead?”

His lips part. The wind catches between us, brushing against my skin like a breath held too long.

“It was meant to be my resting place,” he says at last, the words like ash on his tongue.

I blink. “What?”

“That chamber—it was sealed centuries ago. When the war ended. When I... was betrayed.”

I can barely breathe. “By who?”

He looks at me. Not past me. Not through me. At me.

“You,” he says.

It doesn’t make sense. It can’t. But the moment he says it, the whisper returns.

Medea.

The name slides through my thoughts like a knife.

“No.” I stagger back, shaking my head. “That’s not possible.”

“I said the same thing,” he murmurs. “When I saw you. When I felt your magic bind to mine. When the ruin trembled beneath your presence.”

I clutch my temples. The visions are coming faster now—screams on the wind, fire rising through marble floors, soldiers bowing before a throne. A woman’s face in a shattered mirror.

My face.

But not me.

Not anymore.

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