Page 152 of The Princesses of Ruin
“A useless word. You can’t comprehend my sorrow. Why try to apologize for it?”
Her eyes shimmer with gold light, and it’s gone. The weight on my chest. The ache in my soul. The yearning. Missing. Needing. Hoping. Loving. Hating…
All gone.
I gasp at the taste of true freedom.
“I can make it like this always, if you want, but there is no escape from your duty. You’re not allowed to die. You either live with your pain, or you live without it.”
Scarlett moves through my mind. I watch her smile in the tub as she traces my jaw with slippery, lavender-smelling fingers. There’s nothing in me that wants that back. Nothing in me that cares it’s gone. I want to hate myself for not missing her, but no hate comes.
“Give it back,” I say.
She holds out her hand. There’s a lightning brand around her wrist, and it shimmers as gold magic infuses her skin. “Swear to me you won’t take your own life.”
“Swear on what? I have nothing.”
She pauses for a fraction of a second and I can see she’s conferring with the others. Her eyes dart to the door and back to me. “Then I’ll keep you like this forever.”
She stands and a sense of urgency blooms in my gut. There’s no desire behind it, but an impetus to return to the way I was.
“Wait, I’ll swear on her memory,” I say.
I want to see her face and feel the love I used to feel. This emptiness is worse than death.
She unhooks one of my manacles and grabs my bandaged hand. Our magic collides and battles in an icy storm, then finally settles as a dagger on our forearms: teal with a golden hilt, and sharp enough to pierce bone.
A trickle of feeling comes back to me. My heart palpitates at the sensation.
“More. All of it,” I say, gripping her tightly.
“It’ll overwhelm you. Slowly is the way.”
Alyse says nothing as she unshackles the rest of me, then leaves. Long, uncomfortable minutes pass as everything I once felt flowsback into me. The chest-crushing love and the agony of its loss comes last. Tears stream down my face and I take deep gulps of air to quell them. It’s no use.
The pain is so great it fills every corner of me, taking up all the space. I can’t hold it any longer. I can’t bear it.
But I promised I would…
Frustration barrels up my chest and bursts from my throat. I bellow my pain to the ceiling until there’s no air left in the room, and darkness takes me again.
“Wake up,” a familiar, gruff voice says and a hand pushes my shoulder.
It hurts, but the pain is manageable. I open my eyes to see Gareth standing over me. A pang of relief and a wash of hope fills the hollowness of my being.
“I see you didn’t shuffle off,” I say, my voice raw and quiet.
“Not yet,” he says, then scratches his beard thoughtfully. “Lost a couple of my copies, though.”
I scowl. “That’s possible?”
He smirks. “Nah.”
“How long has it been? What’s been happening?” I ask, the desire to know what’s gone on outside this room burning through my other thoughts.
Gareth plops into the seat beside my bed with an old man’s groan. “It’s been eight or nine days. Some of the wealthy Upper Kingdomites tried for a power grab…grabbing what, I don’t even know. The palace is in shambles. Most of the city is too.
“The princesses are going by queens now, as are their husbands, and they’ve named you a king, too. They’re out and about, doing all the goings on of fixing a kingdom. Liliana isactuallyfixing the kingdom. She’s been teaching classes to the Spiders on how to rune-write in the air, helpin’ her to clean up the city for repairs. Let me know if you need me to stop.”
