Page 92 of A World of Ruins

‘It is not so simple to give up a crown, Nara,’ he mutters. Our gazes lock on to each other for a few tense seconds. Then he sighs and looks towards the moon. ‘You know, if it were a normal night after stealing from one of the jewellery shops, I’d be drinking away at Gus’s den.’ He smirks to himself. ‘He’d probably tell me something along the lines of how I need to better myself. You know, the typical things a father should say to their son when they’re rebelling.’

Now I understand.

The guilt is slowly eating away at him.

‘They say it’s honourable for us to have one of our dragons use their fire to burn us after our passing, but I couldn’t even give that to him.’ He leans forward, dropping his head in his hands. ‘There is nothing left of him.Nothing.’

I lower myself in front of him and try to pry his hands away, but he doesn’t let me as he shakes me away, saying ‘No,’ in such a broken voice.

‘Darius,’ I say helplessly. I’m so used to him being the one there to protect me, humour me and build me up, that this hurts too much. Sadness and empathy wash over me as I stare at him, wanting to pull him away from the throne and leave.

Something wet smacks against my skin, and I look up between the gaps in the broken ceiling as it leaks, with sudden rain dripping down onto us.

‘We need to go.’ I press the palms of my hands against Darius’s knees. I don’t care so much about getting drenched; I only care for him. ‘Darius—’

‘I lied to you that day,’ he cuts me off abruptly, lifting his head. I still. ‘That day in the dungeons.’ There’s a gloss in his eyes, brightening the gold rings around the iris.

I think I know what he is going to tell me.

The moment when I asked him if he remembered what Aurum did to him, he told me no.

I brace myself for his answer. He can see the fear written on my face.

‘I remember every damn thing that happened,’ he whispers, but the clarification just makes my chest burn. ‘And I wish I couldn’t. I wish I couldn’t remember a damn thing.’

My exhale sounds like a sob as I close my eyes.

‘I wish I could forget the faces of each person I had to kill against my will.’ His voice wavers. ‘How they begged and pleaded for their life, to not be bitten.’

I shake my head as if that will make me get rid of this heaviness inside my heart.

‘I’m broken, Nara.’

My body quivers, but not from the rain, as the Galgr’s words come back to me in the most haunting way.

‘If he is breaking, then he must do so alone.’

‘I’m the one thing I desperately didn’t want to be,’ Darius says. When I open my eyes, I see the rain mixing with his tears.

My arms wind around his neck with an instinctive tenderness. He hugs me back tighter, his body trembling as I shut my eyes, determined to take every little bit of pain away from him. But I know I can’t.

I can’t fix him.

I don’twantto fix him.

I just want him to fly.

‘He can’t do any of that to you any more,’ I tell him without a care that my silk nightgown is entirely soaked.

‘It will never leave my mind,’ he says into the crook of my neck, his breath shaking as he exhales.

I tighten my grip around his neck, my knees aching from kneeling for too long. Yet it doesn’t matter to me. Not one bit. ‘What else did he make you do?’ I whisper, not eager to find out, but needing him to not keep it all to himself any longer.

It takes him a minute to answer me, and when he does, his voice sounds like he’s been screaming for hours. ‘He would coerce me into using a blade on myself, making me count how many times I could do it before I lost consciousness.’

The confession flies at me like a dagger and I flinch in his arms as my anger surges. I tamp it down for his sake.

‘I tried,’ he says. ‘I tried so hard not to let him in, but every single day, I failed.’

---