Page 44 of Heavy is the Crown
I let out a low groan as she points toward a closed door, indicating I should get changed there. I shuffle past, but just as I’m about to open the door, her voice stops me. “Shadow, I’ll say this once: Ava means a lot to me. She took care of me when she could have just as easily told me to fuck off. She had my back in a fight that wasn’t hers. But she also means a lot to Buttercup, and I will warn you once and only once. My magic has no interest in excuses.”
When I look back, her normally green eyes are a shade closer to black, her face hard.
It’s the face of the Harbinger.
Astrea shows me to a loft-style guest room after I’ve pulled on the borrowed clothing, before leaving me alone to contemplate my choices. The sounds of her cooking below are strangely soothing as I lie on the soft bed and look up at the cracked ceiling. My dragon slumbers inside, staying true to his word to leave me alone for now. I often wonder what our relationship would have been like if I hadn’t been forced to hide him so long. Would we be in this same space? Would I be as broken? Would he be as feral? For so long, I’ve kept him locked away, kept us separate because that’s what I thought I needed after everything. But maybe I shouldn’t have.
The questions whirl in my mind until I’m overwhelmed, and I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Can I offer you some advice?”
I startle upward, not having heard Astrea approach up the stairs. She’s filled out since I last saw her, the curves on her body finally back. She moves into the room and sits down on the chairopposite the bed. “Go ahead,” I say. “I think you're going to offer it anyway.”
She lets out a laugh so unlike her. I’m envious of her, envious of the freedom she seems to have found despite being on the run. “Well, I mean, you did drop down in full-on dragon form, so I think I’m entitled to a little advice giving,” she says with a wink. I watch as she pulls her hair up, looping it into a bun before tucking herself deeper into the chair.
“That wasn’t my choice,” I grouse.
She only rolls her eyes. “Look, you’ve had three months to figure your shit out, and you haven’t, so now you get to listen to me. Shadow, when I say I understand how hard it is to fight your demons, I truly do understand. You pulled me from Alexi, you know what I went through, maybe even more vividly than Ciaran does. You saw me at times he didn’t, cleaned me up before bringing me to him.”
I cringe thinking about how I found her at times. How I attempted to spare my friend from seeing her like that.
She continues talking, ignoring the ghosts that are looming over us. “I’ve spent most my life living in fear, that anxiety so fucking overwhelming I thought I might die from it. And at times, I honestly would rather have died. It was exhausting dealing with it, but it also seemed exhausting to try to die. So, instead, I remained in this self-inflicted purgatory. For years.”
The world gutters out at those words. Words that have bounced around in my head for so long but refused to be voiced out loud.
“I also know how it feels to try to deny, or even fight, a darkness within you. This magic? It changed me. Every day, I fight to keep control of it, but if I deny it? It finds a way out of me, and normally not in a way I enjoy.” Darkness clouds those emerald eyes before she pinches the bridge of her freckled noseand shakes her head. “Do you know what helps me the most, though?”
“God, I hope you say me,” Ciaran’s deep voice sounds from the stairs. I watch him plant a kiss on Astrea’s head, tugging on her bun while he does it. Their mating bond fills the air around us, the small space enveloped by it.
“Mmm. Yes, actually.” She turns and looks at me. “When Ciaran pulled that piece of metal from me, my magic consumed every part of my soul—it was dark and terrifying. But Ciaran pulled me back, and our bond continues to keep me here and grounded.”
I want to open my mouth, to tell her I don’t deserve my mates. Not after everything I’ve done. I know I’m unlovable. Know that even if things had been different, I would still have a darkness in me that is untamed and wild. But I can’t get the words out, can’t force my mouth to open.
She leans forward, Ciaran’s hand still resting on her shoulder. “You deserve the love of your mates. You deserve happiness. You may think you have too much blood and death on your hands. That you are evil because part of you enjoyed it. But, Shadow . . . you can have all those things inside you AND still deserve love. Things are not black-and-white. You saved me. You saved Ava. You are a good person AND have some darkness. I have just as much blood on my hands, and I know I still deserve this happiness.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know the things I’ve done.” The statement is out before I can think twice, the words vomited into a pile in front of me. “It’s my fault Ciaran had to stay under Alexi.” I’m having an out-of-body experience at this point as all the words unravel out of me. “I liked killing for Alexi, enjoyed unleashing myself. The scars on my body are penance for every life I’ve taken, but they also served as a way to control myself so I wouldn’t hurt more people. Wouldn’t give into that enjoymentfully. I use Eufori to keep the voices inside back behind a glass wall.” Tears slip down my face as the things I’ve kept locked away are pulled from me like some demonic exorcism. My soul laid bare at the feet of my brother and his mate. “I should never have survived Alexi. I wish Ciaran had let me die instead of putting himself in service to that man. I deserved that death. So many others should be alive, and yet, because of me, they aren’t. My mother should be alive.” The last of the confessions, the scariest one, sears my tongue before the last of my demons tumbles out. “And what if . . . what if they see that darkness and decide not to choose me, after all?”
Astrea’s eyes shine with emotion, a content smile settling on her face as she watches me pull in breath after breath, sobs starting to ripple over me. Ciaran moves and gathers me into his large body, holding me through it all.
“I chose to save you,” Ciaran says into my ear. “Chose to help my best friend—no, my brother escape a cage that he was put in. But I didn’t realize that you would still be in a mental cage, and for that, I am sorry.” He pulls back, cradles my face in his hands, and looks me straight in the eyes. “I willneverregret the deal I made with him to get you out. My only regret is not understanding how much you needed reminders that you are deserving of love.”
Words escape me as Ciaran says all the things I’ve longed to hear. All the things that I am sure Ava and Drago have been telling me, but I refused to hear. No, that’s not fair. I don’t think Icouldhear them until this moment. There is something strange about healing that no one ever tells you—something could be said a million times over, but until you are in a certain spot at a certain time, you won’t absorb it.
Shadow. You and I deserve better than we’ve been given, my dragon echoes in my mind.Stop punishing us. Let us have a life with our mates like we deserve.
I’m not sure how long I sit in Ciaran’s arms, but eventually, the tears dry and I’m able to pull back. Astrea is still curled up on the chair, Poppy now a fluffy ball in her arms.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice cracking a bit.
Astrea offers me a smile before it slips from her face and she goes wholly still, her eyes tracking but not seeing, head tilting to the side.
“Kamerat?” Ciaran walks toward her.
“We need to go back to the city.” Her voice has a far-off quality to it, infused with her power as she listens to that dark magic. “Ava is in trouble.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The Order wants the princess. They seem to believe they need her to access the magic.
