Page 91 of The Curse of a Kingdom
Nava’s mind reached deep within herself, and the bitter taste on her tongue grew more pronounced. Her eyes snapped to the kingdom’s emblem stitched on the backs of both thrones. A dead tree, with roots and branches that mirrored one another. The queen’s tree.
Nava knew this already; she had talked about it with Arkimedes when he showed her both the real one and the one in the forest where his mother had been killed. But the nagging sensation that she was forgetting something told her it wasn’t a memory from this kingdom, but from a different one.
Nava’s throat closed in, her vision hazing. When she arrived in the kingdom, her first reaction to the emblem was that she had seen it before. Not in a book or in a dream, but etched onto the blades that decorated her soulmate’s cabin walls a year ago.
There had been two swords. One said his name, Arkimedes B. Valeron. The other had the image of this kingdom’s tree. It had been the sword he’d taken with him to battle, choosing this weapon over the one from when he was a Valeron, a Crow.
“He always wanted to be back,” she breathed.
Arkimedes had been here like he had told her and had left, maybe intending to return to what he’d always perceived as his destiny, the one he was so adamant to fulfill now. He had wanted to be back because the kingdom needed him. Had his plans been derailed the day he found her when he’d been forced to run away across the world to survive and not die?
Her mother’s choice had made it so. Because they were soulmates and being apart after finding each other meant death. He’d had to run away from this life because of her.
“The royal army will begin preparing for an attack, and until further notice, all civilians,including humans, are banned from entering the forest. This is for your protection, and defiance to my command will be your end. By my hands or the demons,” the king finished and sat again.
The heat in her body swelled, setting her nerve endings aflame.
A dry cackle escaped Devon’s lips. “I guess he didn’t tell you he always intended to be back.”
Swallowing, Nava turned around, not able to look at Arkimedes any longer with the guilt that sank in her stomach. No wonder he didn’t want to leave. He had already sacrificed a decade of his life to wait for her, alone and unwanted in that forest she was trying so hard to force him back into.
Devon was in front of her in a few strides. “So are you this quiet because of the Zorren?”
“Oh, no, I know about the Zorren,” she breathed. “I didn’t put together that he knew he was a freaking prince.”
“Ah.” Devon’s eyes shone with mischief. Like he had been waiting for this kind of dessert. “So he didn’t tell you last year he had a big life responsibility awaiting him elsewhere? He does like to keep his things quiet.”
Nava’s jaw ached as her vision blurred with unshed tears. “I didn’t know.”
“You don’t know many things, cat. However, I figured he told you, with you both being . . . so close.”
Had her mother known? She hadn’t mentioned it in her diary. Nava’s heart was pulling and pushing her toward angry feelings her mind didn’t think it had the right to go to. “He is a man of secrets,” she said, lowering her gaze to the floor, trying to calm her erratic breathing. Horror clutched her at the thought that he had given up so much for her.
“He had been back for three days the day we found you. We wanted to check on Celeste, and her involvement with a shady group, before he went to the Society and explained he had to leave.” Devon’s casual tone in the oddest moments always surprised her.
Shady group—Nava filed that comment for later. Right now she didn’t want to ask about her mother.
“Would the Society have let him go?” Was that even her voice? She sounded so beaten down.
“Of course. The Society has no claims over the crown’s heirs. The king and Arkimedes alone are dangerous enough to piss off, let alone with an army of Dark Ones.”
Nava swallowed. “That’s why he wants to stay now. He always wanted to be back here.”
Devon’s smile faltered into a grimace. “Arkimedes of ten years ago wanted this. The man I met last year was not the same brother I knew, for better or for worse.”
Nava loved the man he was; she was hopeless at loving him even now when he was a stranger wearing her lover’s skin. “How much longer do we have to stay in this room? I’d rather leave when the king is not looking to murder me.”
“The doors are still closed, so unless the prince or that guard who follows you around comes to get us out, we are very well stuck in here.”
Nava raised her hand to her temple, trying to massage away her building headache. She would have liked to leave this kingdom, but now things were different. She had more information that made her own selfish needs take pause.
She wished Arkimedes had confided in her, but she also understood him. Circumstances had made her walk the steps of someone who withheld information due to fear, and she wouldn’t be so quick to judge him again.
Maybe he didn’t want her to feel the way she did now—like she had stolen his life away.
She had to believe he had been trying to protect her from a kingdom that hated humans. From a place that might be dangerous for her, as he didn’t know why he’d been abandoned in the first place. She understood now that however misguided either of their reasonings were, the truths they withheld weren’t meant to hurt one another.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
