Page 96 of The Curse of Ophelia

My parting words to him echoed in my mind.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

And yet, he did not.

His jaw tensed when my face shifted into a razor-sharp glare. The dim mystlight in the corners of the room illuminated the remnants of blood, dirt, and scars covering his skin.

“Ophelia,” he started, voice so low that if I hadn’t been watching his lips move, I wouldn’t have known he had spoken.

“No,” I interrupted, stepping farther away in the small space. The back of my legs met a writing desk, and I let it support me, my hand coming to my throat to hold back the sobs that had built up since I first laid eyes on him. I’d forced them down, but now that I faced the truth—faced him—the hot sting in my eyes was overwhelming. “How could you—” I whispered.

My question was cut off when I met his haunted stare, but he understood. How could you lie? How could he break the one thing I was so sure of—break us—by lying to me?

“I couldn’t tell you. You wouldn’t have let me go if you knew.” He appeared somewhere between desperation and anger. If he had one minute or one century left to live, he would spend it trying to make me understand.

And he was right. Had I known that he was walking away for good, I never would have let him go. My fate be damned, he mattered more than my life.

But still— “You. Left.” My whisper sliced through the air, sharp with accusation.

“I never wanted to.” Frustration broke his voice, the low timbre like a storm waiting to unleash its first clap of thunder.

“You walked away and did not return.” My shout strained my throat, and I threw my arms out. “You knew you would not return.”

“Lying was my only choice.” He clenched his hands repeatedly before turning and slamming his palms against the wall. “Fuck,” he muttered.

The muscles in his back rippled beneath their scars as he took a second to breathe. When he turned back to me, he leaned forward, hands open before him as if searching for an answer. “What was I supposed to do? It was the only way to keep you safe.”

“My safety is my choice, Malakai. We could have found a way together.”

“They wouldn’t have allowed it. They wanted me, Ophelia.” He placed a hand on his chest, both bracing himself and emphasizing the harsh reality. “They wanted me in exchange for Mystique power. To consolidate it and corrupt it. And Kakias wanted to torture me as her own Spirits-damned toy to get revenge on my father for even having me, and he was—I don’t know what happened to him, but he was different. He let her do that to me. But no one besides them knew that you were the rightful heir to the position, so I thought if I left, it would hide my father’s shameful plan and keep you safe. They promised you would not be harmed if I gave myself up.” His voice rose with each truth.

“As if you should have believed them!” I raged. “They would have used me anyway.” Paired me as the Engrossian prince’s submissive partner or killed me outright—somehow they would have used me.

“I didn’t know that!” The storm within him finally broke, and he shouted, “I did what I had to do, and I would do it again.”

His panting breaths filled the tense space between us.

“I will not have my future controlled, Malakai. Not only did you keep your family’s secrets, but you hid my blood right from me, as well.” Did he not see how twisted his decisions were?

“I’m sorry for not consulting you, but what choice did I have?”

I inhaled, fighting through my anger for a moment to see the pain in his eyes. Malakai was not the root of this problem. “Lucidius brought shame upon himself.” Malakai recoiled at his father’s name, a knife to my gut. But Lucidius should feel that remorse, not Malakai.

“Listen to me,” I tried to speak calmly, waiting for his eyes to meet mine before I continued. “He is the only one that should have been ashamed of his actions.” Ashamed for offering up his own son in search of power he masqueraded as love. Ashamed for turning his back on the Mystiques who trusted him.

Malakai took a deep breath, letting my words settle. “I know you think I took your choice from you, but my father played the only game I would let him win. He knew that if he threatened you, then he would have me under his thumb.”

I couldn’t take this. Spirits, I couldn’t take any of these truths. I sank further into the desk behind me, fingers curling around the edge until the wood bit into my flesh.

“Fuck them,” I spat. “Fuck the Spirits and the Angels and all of them. We would have found a way. Together. As we always should have been.”

He shook his head. “The only reason I could leave was because I knew it was keeping you safe. If you had given yourself over, and they had tortured you as they did me…” He swallowed heavily over the end of the sentence, shuddering. “I would have lived centuries in this Spirit-forsaken hole, faced any means of torture, if it meant you would live out your days happily.”

I scoffed, hot tears cutting a path through the dirt and blood on my cheeks. “Happy? Do you know how I spent these past two years, Malakai?”

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