Page 89 of The Madman and his broken Princess
I held his furious gaze. “Don’t you dare call me a liar. Maybe not all of my reasons for killing him were about you. Maybe I was being selfish too because I want to preserve what’s left of the boy I loved with all my heart.”
He grabbed my face, bringing our faces close together. “That boy is dead, Amelia. Dead.”
A few tears fell from my eyes and trailed down my cheeks. “Sometimes I think you want him to be.”
“I do,” he said harshly. “He was weak. All he reminds me of is pain and humiliation. I’ve become so much more than him.”
“All he reminds you of is pain and humiliation?” I swallowed hard. “What about me?”
His eyes flickered with hesitation. “You are here. You are more than my past. That boy was too weak to protect you, too weak to really make you his. But I’m not. I can and will protect you until my last breath, and I made you mine.”
“But I was his—I wasyoursin your weakest moments, and I’m yours now as you exert your power in the cruelest ways. I’ll always be yours, Nestore, even if I’m terrified of what it’ll do to me or where it’ll take me.”
“Into darkness and damnation, that’s where. I wish I could spare you that fate, but I can’t be without you. I can’t let you go, even if it would save you.”
“I wouldn’t let you. I left once, but I won’t leave again. It doesn’t matter where I go. I always take you with me.”
Nestore’s eyes strayed from mine again, and his expression twisted with renewed rage and a hint of utter madness. “Go.”
“Nestore.”
“Go before I do something I’ll regret my entire life.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Just go. I need to calm the chaos in my head, and I can’t do it with you right here.”
I stepped back. The look of fury in his eyes finally made me turn around and take flight. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, but he deserved the time to come to terms with what I had done.
I unlocked the cell door and went inside, my heart pounding in my chest as it had always done when I was close to Lamorgese, even when he was the one in a cage at my mercy. I had kidded myself into believing our balance of power had shifted simply by locking him in, but until the end, he had held power over me. Maybe he still did.
The air carried a sharp, biting scent from the fired shots.
I sagged to my knees, my bones flaring with pain at the impact. The tang of burned metal clung to my nose. I shuddered violently. What would I do now that he was dead? How would I tip the power in my favor?
Rage and despair battled inside my body. How could Amelia have done this to me? I was glad she was out of sight. I wasn’t in control, and I worried about what I would do to her.
I had spent the past three years torturing my tormentor, hoping it would heal the wounds he had left, praying it would make the nightmares go away, and would give me a sense of peace, but none of it had happened.
I glowered at the corpse, his emaciated form littered with wounds. He didn’t bear any semblance to the man who’d destroyed me, who had killed me in every way but one.
I shuddered, then sagged forward, burying my face in my hands. I felt as if I might cry, as if I still held the potential for it, but instead, I tossed my head back and let out a despaired scream. A shuffle made me glare toward the cell door.
Amelia. Like an apparition in all white and without a sense of the danger she was in.
“Leave,” I croaked as I shuddered again.
“No.”
She didn’t. She took a few hesitant steps into the cell. She, too, was caught up in memories of this place. Her eyes focused on me, and not the bloody body by my side, as she bridged the last few steps between us and knelt behind me. She wrapped her arms tightly around me from behind and put her cheek down against the naked skin of my back.
“I’m not myself.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I could hurt you.”
“I know.” She pressed a kiss to my skin. “But you won’t, and I won’t leave. I left once. I won’t again, not when you need me to find yourself.”
