Page 110 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘That’s not why I’m here.’ It was a partial truth. It wasn’t the only reason I was here.

He wrapped his fingers around the bars of the cell, his expression suddenly softening. ‘I don’t care why. I’m just glad I get to see you before it’s all over.’

My stomach twisted, my heart convulsed. He sounded… defeated. ‘You can’t expect me to believe that you’re just going to… to...’

‘Let them execute me?’ he finished for me. ‘I find I’m out of tricks. There’s nothing else to do but wait.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I blurted out. ‘You don’t just give in. You always have another move.’ It sounded like I was pleading with him. I hated it. But I couldn’t stop.

‘You would have another move, wouldn’t you?’ he said, smiling that rare, unguarded smile, accompanied with a flash of dimple. ‘They’d have to drag you kicking and screaming to the pyre. You’d take out a few of them on your way there, too. Your instinct for survival is so vital. Mine is less so.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose I’m not afraid to die.’

My breath caught in a half sob. Why was he speaking like that, with that tone of finality, like it was all a foregone conclusion? Was hetryingto wind me up? ‘How could you let this happen?‘ I demanded. ‘Why would you put me in this position?’

He cocked his head. ‘What position is that?’ When I didn’t answer, he closed his eyes, shaking his head. ‘The last thing I want is for you to feel like this is your responsibility. There’s nothing to fix. When you play the game the way I did, your allies will inevitably turn against you. I’m bearing the consequences of my own choices, and I don’t want you pitying me. I definitely don’t want you to suffer for it.’

‘Just because that’s what you want doesn’t mean you can have it.’

He moved closer to the bars. ‘Not even if it’s the last wish of a dead man?’

‘You’re not dead,’ I said instantly.

‘Not yet.’ He smiled again, bitterly this time. ‘But give them a little longer.’

I bit my lip against the pulse of frantic emotion welling in my chest and behind my eyes, emotion that felt like a pent-up scream.

‘But if you won’t give me that,’ he continued, his eyes sparking with a little of his usual trouble, ‘maybe there’s something else you can give me instead.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A kiss.’

I laughed, semi-hysterically, though I had never encountered anything less funny in my life.

‘Come on,’ he crooned, ‘you can do what you came here for and prove to yourself that all those feelings, everything between us, it was just magic and trickery.’

Kiss him. Kiss him and know once and for all. Kiss him while he was stripped of magic and trapped in a cell and living on borrowed time. I moved closer to the bars, watching him as he watched me, that face I knew so well so damaged, and felt how much I wanted to kiss him. To feel his mouth against mine, as though it would somehow take away the pulsing sense of doom and despair pounding in my chest. I wrapped my fingers around the bars below his. He slid his down until his hands were cupping mine, his skin surprisingly warm for the cold room. He sighed quietly as our skin made contact, and that sound, the relief in it, like he’d been fearing I’d deny him, drove me to close the distance and press my lips to his. And it was like the touch of his lips broke some wall that had been holding back everything that had happened, that had been imprisoning that welling pulse and finally released it. But it didn’t come out as a scream. Instead I was weeping, tears pouring down my cheeks, making the kiss taste of salt and sorrow.

He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against the bars. Our breath was hot as it mingled in the cold of the cell. The tears didn’t stop.

‘What’s your conclusion?’ Some of the cunning was back in his voice, some of the challenge. I opened my eyes to find him watching me with a gleam of triumph. ‘Just magic?’

I was gasping, clutching his hands through the bars, my heart aching and twisting and shrivelling because he was in a cell and he was going to die. And I couldn’t answer him.

He stroked my face. ‘No such luck, my love. There was never any magic in the way our souls reach for each other. No explanation or easy solution for you. I never tricked you or enchanted you. There’s just you and me.’

The tears flowed faster. My desperation was bitter and frantic. ‘I can’t watch them execute you.’ It came out a sob. I couldn’t even hate myself for the weakness.

‘You don’t have to watch.’ His voice was strained now, wavering. He cupped my chin. ‘I hope you don’t watch.’

I opened my mouth to respond but suddenly became aware of the faint echo of footsteps in the hallway behind me. ‘Someone’s coming,’ I whispered, drawing away from him, my hand leaving his to fumble around in my pocket. I froze when I heard a voice quietly calling out, ‘Rhiandra.’ A few moments later Gwinellyn was standing in the doorway, sending the shadows cavorting away with the glow of the lantern in her hand.

‘I came to make sure he was really locked up,’ I said hurriedly, scrubbing the tears from my cheeks and willing my voice to be steady. It sounded too loud and echoed strangely off the stone. ‘I needed to see him behind bars with my own eyes.’

She studied me for a long moment, a strange sadness licking at the edges of her expression. ‘Is that why you attacked four guards, locked three more in a room and stole two sets of keys?’ She fixed her gaze on Draven now. ‘Including the key to his cell.’

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