Page 16 of What did you do?
My stomach churned from nerves—it was showtime.
My eyes stung as I squeezed Eli’s warm hand. Light wisps of smoke lifted from mine, and this time, we both looked away in an attempt to ignore it.
“Yeah,” I said, shaking myself out of my wallowing. “Just nervous, I guess, and tired.”
Tired wasn’t the half of it. I had gone from tirelessly fighting to get close to Mendax, the Unseelie prince, to fighting to keep myself away from him.
He had been nothing like they had told me.
I sighed, feeling it down to my ankles. I had fought for my life in the trials Mendax and his bitch of a mother had forced me to partake in. I trembled, still able to feel the weight of the blade in my hand.
Ouch!
I gasped, dropping Aurelius’s hand to clutch at my chest.
It hurt—emotionallyandphysically.
It hurt in a way I’d never be able to forget.
My time was running out.
“It’ll be okay. Mother is going to be so happy to see you,” Eli said.
I noted the uneasy cracks in his typically smooth voice. Warm droplets of sweat dripped down what felt like every inchof my body. I squeezed my eyelids shut tightly and held still for a moment before forcing them to reopen. I refocused on the giant, shimmering castle once again.
The tall wildflowers rustled in a soft breeze, tickling my leg. I grabbed a handful of the stems and tore the clump out, throwing them to the ground.
“Maybe you should rest before we see the queen,” Eli said gently as he stared at the crumpled pile of flowers at my feet.
“No,” I stated firmly. “I want the pain to stop—I want my heart whole again as soon as possible.”
Maybe if my heart was whole again, it would fill this horrible ache that filled it.
“Caly?” Eli questioned, resting his hand on my lower back.
“What, Aurelius?” I snapped, instantly regretting the use of his full name as soon as he shrunk backward.
Relief washed over me though when our eyes locked. I knew he understood.
I had noticed the way his touches seemed to linger now. How his eyes darkened sometimes when he watched me.
That couldn’t happen.
It had nothing to do with Mendax.
Aside from seeing Eli briefly at the trial with Mendax, it had been years since I had seen him in person. And now, the comforting best-friend touches held something deeper, something that felt more breakable.
In my eyes, Aurelius was always the golden boy who somehow, no matter how tough, always seemed to do and say the perfect things, always put a Band-Aid on me when my broken bits felt too rough. He was my hero.
So why couldn’t I stop thinking about the villain?
If Mendax had been the villain though, then what did that make me, the person who stabbedhimin the back? In somestories, the person who slayed the villain instantly became the hero.
I knew I wasn’t the hero. Which was just one more reason Eli needed to stay away from me. He’d hate me soon enough.
I had sacrificed every facet of my life to stand in the exact place I was standing now.
So why was I dreading it?
