Page 40 of Too Dangerous To Die

“You’re wrong,” I say. “I’m not her.”

“You may not remember, but something in you does.” Rhaegar’s voice is calm, too calm. “You walked through that ruin like you belonged there. You found the seal. You broke it.”

“I didn’t mean to?—”

“But you did.”

The wind howls between us.

I can feel it, magic spinning out from me in ragged threads. I close my eyes, try to center it, but it’s slipping through my fingers like water. Everything feels like it’s peeling away from the inside. My name, my memories, my sense of self. Every whisper in my head carries a new piece of someone else’s life.

And worse, it feels good.

It feels powerful. Like slipping into armor I didn’t know I wore.

“I’m not her,” I say again, but my voice breaks halfway through.

“No,” Rhaegar says softly, stepping closer, the edge gone from his voice. “You’re not. But she’s waking in you. And you have to decide who you’ll become before she takes control.”

I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to grab him and shake the truth out of his cursed gargoyle frame. But I can’t do any of those things because all I can feel is guilt. Ancient, echoing, marrow-deep.

“I see things when I sleep,” I admit, trembling. “Places I’ve never been. People I don’t know. And every time I wake up, I remember a little more.”

He studies me like I’m a spell he can’t break.

“What did she do?” I ask. “What did... Medea do to you?”

He hesitates. “She betrayed the Wraithborn. Broke a pact sealed in blood. And with it—my life.”

I reel. “So I killed you?”

“You ended what I was,” he says. “And now you’ve started it all again.”

Our bond pulses hard enough to make me stumble. Rhaegar steps forward to catch me, but I jerk away.

“I don’t know if I can survive this,” I whisper. “If you were sealed here, why are you in that ruin?”

“Fate. Magic. I don’t know,” he says. “Fate has its ways and they play with people. I will make sure you will survive, though. I won’t let you become her.”

“Why are you helping me when I am your enemy?” I whisper.

He gazes at me, and replies solemnly, “I’m an existence that should have perished years ago, but you woke me up. You are mine. I protect what’s mine. I’m also the only one that could destroy what’s mine.”

I hold my breath, his words sounds like a vow coiling around me. It feels like a promise of a thousand lifetimes.

18

RHAEGAR

She doesn’t look back.

Even after all I said. Even after the bond between us pulsed hard enough to shake the earth beneath our feet, she walks several paces ahead of me through the Wastes, her shoulders stiff, her silence louder than any scream.

And I don’t stop her.

I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I get too close.

Every step away from that ruin steals something from me. My strength. My clarity. The iron wall of control I’ve spent centuries mastering begins to erode with every mile we put between us and the truth buried beneath stone.

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