Page 55 of The Awakened Prince

Yet his greatest challenges lay before him. Defeat Zalina, rescue his father, and wake Raela somehow. The tasks seemed impossible. Closing his eyes, he inhaled slowly. All he could do was move forward. And try. And fight. And not quit. Focus on only taking the next step.

If only his father could see him now.

Rolling his shoulders back, he regripped the pommel of his sword. It was time to find Zalina. He burst out from the landing and swept down the hallway toward the balcony where she had been and where he expected her to lie in wait for his arrival. A cat to his mouse.

But as he turned, he abruptly halted and backpedaled. He had come face-to-face with his father. Recovering, Killian rebalanced and was about to relax his stance when the skin on his neck prickled. Something was wrong. His father’s normally sharp blue eyes had dulled like melting frost on the window, and his mouth hung slack and loose. Killian stepped to the side, and his father stepped to the side with him. Killian went through the quick motions of a soldier’s warm-up with his sword. His father mimicked every form smoothly. Each movement showed his hard-earned skill, honed from a life of combat, but was also not quite right, like an echo distorting his original voice. His training was evident but altered. Unlike disabling a butler with a candelabra, his father might actually be able to fight back.

Killian frowned. His gaze caught two glowing eyes in the shadows. Zalina crouched in the corner of the room, her malformed body curved forward and her jagged wings tucked close behind her. She smiled, and her finger-long thin gray teeth glistened in the torchlight. Her red eyes watched him.

Killian tried to step toward her, but his father matched him fluidly.

“Stop this now, Zalina,” Killian called.

“I have no more distractions—thanks to your helpful little fairies meddling with the goblins and the people. I am free to focus. Your father and I are of one mind.”

Killian’s sword slashed downward. “Leave him out of this.”

Her laugh of many voices slithered around him. “He was always part of this. He’s a tool at my disposal to get me what I want. If you would only consent to marry me, this whole thing would be over. We could reign. Together.”

Killian’s shoulders stiffened. “I will never marry you.”

Zalina rose to her full height, still bent on her dragon-like legs. Spikes from her skull met in the back and continued between her wings in a single set of spikes down her spine. She paced the far hall. “You must. I deserve this. My mother is queen. I deserve to rule!”

“Every ruler must serve their people and fight for them, Zalina. No onedeservesthe role. To serve as a leader is a gift. A challenge. A fight to do what is right for all the people. Not just for yourself.” Killian pointed his sword out the window. “Manipulating and battling your people is not the way to be a good ruler.”

She spat on the ground. “I had no choice. First, the fairies meddled with the princess, then your mother used her star-forsaken blood magic. They made me this way.”

“Zalina, you are responsible for yourself. You chose your own way. You can choose now to stop. To turn. To change.”

Her eyes darkened as her maw opened in a growl. “I choose you. I choose marriage by coercion.” She splayed out her clawed hands. “I can’t kill you directly. I need you to overcome the magic over your throne. I will threaten everything you hold dear until you marry me. Then you and I can rule this land together. You could be the leader you always wanted to be! Even better than your father!”

Killian scrutinized the slack face of his father—a face he hadn’t looked at in a long time. Not really. Looked around, looked down on, avoided, but not observed. The king’s face looked so wrinkled and vulnerable now. It wasn’t lined with criticism or disdain, but neither was it the laughing face he remembered from his youth. Now, he was just a man. A fallible man who perhaps had been trying his best. The vulnerability was startling. Perhaps he and his father weren’t so different after all.

Killian sighed, his right arm relaxing the tip of the sword on the ground. “I won’t marry you, Zalina. Stop this here, before anyone else gets hurt. This isn’t the right way.”

A cry, more rage than pain ripped from Zalina. She raised her hand, and his father flung himself forward, thrusting with his sword. Killian parried and sidestepped, the blow much harder than those of the smaller creatures. His ribs burned from the ogres’ attacks, but he pushed the pain aside. He searched for a way to incapacitate his father without hurting him. But it wouldn’t be easy. His father swung his sword, spinning and cutting down on him. Killian leapt aside and danced backward, guarding the pummeling hits that his father landed. His father’s sleeve fell back, and Killian glimpsed the glowing purple mark on his forearm. Killian ached to free him and glanced toward the balcony to see if a fairy would bring magic water. But the fairies were too far away.

In his distraction, his father landed a slicing blow on Killian’s leg, and he fell to one knee. His father lifted the sword. Killian surged forward on the other leg, trying to tackle his father, but the king turned at the last moment and Killian missed. He landed on the ground again and scrambled backward.

“What I see is a boy.” His father stepped toward him slowly, his voice stilted and monotone. “A boy that is happy when the sun is out. But when things get hard, when you face a struggle, you quit.”

Killian froze, those words all too familiar. The king struck down, and Killian rolled away.

“You have quit your whole life.” The king approached again. This time, his sword pointed at Killian’s face. “You quit. You will never be ready.”

The words struck deep. His father spoke his words from their argument. Was Zalina there that day? Or was this just a pattern of her puppetry, to reuse memories?

“You’ll never be king.”

Killian’s face crumpled. He shuffled back, unable to rise, trying to get away from the king, anything to gain distance. He kept one side toward Zalina, unwilling to let her slip out of sight. But he already felt defeated. The words were just as crushing today as they were the first time he’d heard them. He rolled out onto the balcony to avoid his father’s next blow.

But … wait. Killian frowned. That wasn’t what his father had actually said. Killian had gone over the moment a hundred times since then. What had he actually said? Killian struggled to remember. He could picture the two of them in the office, at the end of the table. His father’s true voice rang in his mind.

“I hope you will be better than me … but … not today. Being king is about endurance, patience, and wisdom … you must fight for every victory and never give up in the losses. Not run. Fight … you are not yet ready.”

His father had said exactly what Auntie Shou had said, but Killian hadn’t been ready to hear him. Killian hadn’t been listening.

Yet.

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