Page 2 of Fearless

I stare at the scarlet splotch, ears ringing and vision blurring.

Honey. It’s just honey.

Rivers of red twine down my leg, their currents swift enough to have me rocking on my heels. Or maybe it’s the slow realization of my fate that has this throne room spinning like the band of steel that chokes my thumb. I blink at the shiny floor, staring at the shell of a girl reflected up at me. Her face is streaked with dirt, eyes haunted by a future she hasn’t yet seen and never thought she would. Silver hair dusts her shoulders, as pale as the sweaty face it sticks to. She sways, like one might on the shoes of a loved one. Hands are cuffed behind her back, blood leaking from tattered skin.

She is shambles. She is haunted.

She is to be a bride.

But that can’t be true. I took his everything from him. And he is going to kill me for it. He has to.

My chest is suddenly too tight, breath catching in my throat beside the flood of words I’m swallowing back. Because death is the fate I’ve been preparing for my whole life—the destiny I deserve. I feel it on the stained fingertips that will forever drip with the blood of others, in theOcarved atop my sputtering heart to brand me a weakness.

Death is the only constant in my life, like an old friend who hones every one of my dark secrets into a weapon. He calls me weak and all I hear is Ordinary. He calls me doomed and all I hear is an earnest promise. His is the hand my bloody fingers reach for because there is comfort in his imminence.

Now there is nothing but the ringing in my ears and this deafening quiet of the unknown.

“Paedyn.”

I stiffen at the same moment the looming figures around me do. He might as well have called me a traitor. A murderer. An Ordinary weakening our Elite kingdom. Because those are the only names this court knows me by. The only names the entirety of Ilya spit as I was paraded to their king. Simply, they sum up the insignificance of my short existence.

My eyes slowly climb from the pattern my blood has painted atop the floor.

Honey. It’s only honey.

Polished shoes crowd my vision, their black shine bleeding into equally dark pant legs. My gaze slides up the slim-fitting stretch of fabric and every seam concealing the strong body beneath. I urge my perusal upward, and my eyes collide with his belt buckle before skipping to the box resting innocently in his raised palm. I know what sits within that velvet case, can see it glinting out of the corner of my eye. And yet, I don’t spare it a glance, as if that could stop the sparkling shackle from inevitably slipping onto my finger.

Higher still is his wrinkled shirt. I trail every button until my gazesettles at the base of his throat and the collar encircling it. I have yet to look him fully in the face since my sentence rolled off his tongue.

“You are to be my bride.”

It’s as though I’ve been thrown back to the Trials and the equally challenging game of pretend that accompanied them. I couldn’t bear to look at him then, not unless I wished to see the king staring back. But I killed the man I once saw reflected in his son’s green gaze. Edric Azer haunts me only in the fragments of my mind and the matching broken heart he carved into. I made sure of that.

And yet, I still cannot bring myself to look at this Kitt.

My throat burns.

I may have created something far worse than his father.

“Paedyn.” His voice is startlingly soft, reminding me of a time when that wouldn’t have been shocking. “Look at me.”

This isn’t the first time he’s said those words in response to my pointed avoidance of his gaze. But there is now so much more keeping my eyes from his, a past far more ruinous than the resemblance to a king who had my father killed. There is betrayal. There is hurt. And history is not easily forgotten by the kings who write it.

But that hint of familiarity in his voice has my chin lifting, my eyes gliding from that crumpled collar to crash into his.

Green. Just as they were, and just as they always will be. He looks at me, and I look at him. A criminal without a father, and a son forever trying to please his. Just as we were, and just as we always will be.

And for the first time since that battle in the Bowl, we truly see each other.

His lips twitch into something too sinister for a smile, too soft for a scowl. As though he wears formidability itself. “The future queen of Ilya bows her head to no one.”

My mouth dries at his words while the entire court leans in to hearthem. Their disbelief is palpable, mingling with the collective cloud of confusion that hangs thickly over our heads. Dozens of eyes prickle my skin, tracing the scar down my neck and the blood staining my skin. They take in this new version of the Silver Savior, the one who cut off the very thing that gave her the title. My short hair does little to conceal the brokenness I now bear so blatantly on my body.

The court gawks at what it is they glean from my appearance. I am a Psychic who is nothing of the sort. An Ordinary who somehow survived their Purging Trials, committed treason, killed their king, and is still standing here before them, alive against all odds.

That is when I hear Death’s whisper echoing from the darkest corner of my mind. The part of me that had accepted my imminent doom the moment I learned what it meant to be powerless in this kingdom. Now he calls me queen, and all I hear is laughter.

Because this fate may prove to be worse than Death himself.

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