Page 60 of A Kingdom's Heart
My heart lurched, but I kept walking.
For a brief moment, his eyes met mine through the slit of his helm. The look was unreadable, sharp as glass. Then he looked away.
I stopped a few feet from him, the book still clutched tight against my chest. “William.”
His voice came low and flat, all warmth gone. “Why are you here?”
“Because I want to make things right,” I said. My voice was small but steady.
He didn’t move. “Well, you can’t.”
The words stung, sharper than I expected. I could see his eyes through the slit of his helm, the brown I used to find comfort in now cold and distant. His gaze fell to the book in my hands, then back to me.
“You are about to marry a prince soon,” he said. “And still you
come to me, begging for forgiveness.”
My chest tightened until it hurt. The prince. The marriage. I had almost forgotten in the ache of losing him.
“I don’t even want to marry him,” I said quietly.
He gave a short, bitter laugh that held no humor. “And you said you didn’t want to lie to me either. But you did, Your Highness.”
The title struck like a blade. My throat burned, but I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I didn’t lie about what I feel for you.”
His expression didn’t change. “That’s not enough.”
The silence between us grew thick, the noise of the courtyard fading around us. I wanted to reach for him, to make him understand, but his armor felt like a wall I could never break through.
I took a step closer, my heart pounding. “Then tell me what I can do to make it enough.”
I reached for his arm without thinking. My fingers brushed the cold edge of his gauntlet before I could stop myself. All I wanted was for him to listen. To look at me and see the truth instead of the lie I had built.
But the moment I touched him, he turned.
His eyes met mine, and the air seemed to still. They were sharper than I had ever seen them. Not wild. Not cruel. Just quiet. Controlled. The kind of anger that came from a wound buried too deep to heal.
I froze. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I could feel the weight of his pain. It sat heavy between us, a silence thicker than words could fill.
He held my gaze for a long moment before speaking. “You can’t,” he said again, his voice low and final.
Something inside me cracked. “Please—”
The word barely left my lips before an arm snapped around my waist, strong and unrelenting, pulling me backward with such force that the breath caught in my throat.
I gasped, but the sound never reached the air. A gloved hand covered my mouth, pressing hard.
The world lurched sideways. The book slipped from my grasp and struck the ground, pages splaying open with a dull thud.
William’s expression shifted from shock to fury, but the world was already blurring at the edges.
The torchlight fractured, the courtyard fading into shadow.
And then everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
WILLIAM
