Page 52 of A Reign of Roses
A resigned sigh ebbed from him. It was bereft, actually, but I could barely see his expression under the silver helmet. “I love you, Arwen,” he said, the silver rings on his hand scraping gently across the skin of my back where my dress hung open as he pulled me close.
Before I could say it back—before I could get in one full inhale of his warmth, his smell—Kane slipped from the bushes, fitting seamlessly in with the other soldiers milling about the street.
Something cold and prickly crawled down my spine, gnawing through my stomach and limbs. A sensation I’d felt too many times.
He was keeping something from me.
14
Kane
The bloodred marble floors ofthe palace had always given away my brother and me as kids. The snapping of our feet, haphazard as we ran and roughhoused and sent expensive sculptures toppling with our boyish glee. Too many lashings from my father and his enforcers had taught me to walk heel-toe to hide the noise. I stalked quietly past the dozens of soldiers. My heart thundered in my pilfered Fae armor.
In stark contrast to my slow, methodical steps, my mind was spiraling. In the shock and relief and sheerjoyat holding Arwen—feeling her piled-too-high hair tickle my chin, inhaling her orange-blossom scent, kissing those lips…
Lost in all that honeysuckle and warmth, I’d forgotten what I’d come here for.
To die.
To kill my father, and thus, to die.
“And if I raised your lover from the soil…gave you the full Faeblood that you seek? If I said neither of you had to die?”Len had asked.“Would you still sacrifice yourself for the good of the realm?”
And what had I thought to myself?
No. Absolutely not.I’d wanted to tell him,Fuck no, and frankly, fuck you for even asking.
And he had granted me my request regardless.
Perhaps he knew what I, in that moment, still hadn’t yet.
That if by some wretched, cosmic joke I found the other half of my heart still alive, that perhaps I’d choose not to give my life for the good of the realms. That I was a selfish, greedy bastard and I wanted nothing in this world but her. Not justice. Not revenge. Not to save the lives of millions of innocents.
Just.Her.
But that in asecondcosmic joke—one surely the Fae Gods were beet-red with laughter over—I was incapable of being selfish with Arwen.
She’d never be able to let Lazarus live. Not before he’d captured her, and surely not now. She’d never let him conquer and maim and destroy. What was I to do? Hold her hostage? Force her to live a long life with me while everyone else suffered? Force her to live knowing that suffering was our fault, because we wanted to be happy? I’d never do that to her. And I’d never let her pay the ultimate price for Lazarus’s death.
So I’d have to instead, in her place.
Perhaps the man that wasn’t Len hadn’t known it all then. Perhaps he’d only hoped.
But I knew for certain—if I managed not to fuck up somehow—that my brusque, hurriedI love youwould serve as our last goodbye.
Arwen would make it to Hart. I had more faith in her thananyone. The rebel king would get her home safely. Across the channel or with a portal cast by the Antler coven. And I’d find the blade. I’d kill my father—fulfill the promise I’d made to that Fae God.
I’d die for the realms. I’d die for my people. I’d die for Arwen, so she could go on living.
By the time I’d reached Lazarus’s bedchamber—the door in the tiered glass atrium marked with the sigil of the moon—not one guard had even cast a glance in my direction. I raised a hand to the red stone handle, pulse thrumming.
“Hey,” a husky voice called to me.
I said nothing, jangling the handle.
“Hey!”
Open, damn it, open—
