Page 111 of Her Cruel Redemption

My fingers twitched against my skirt, where the keys were concealed in a pocket against my leg. ‘I wasn’t really going to do it,’ I said, my voice much quieter this time. ‘I just wanted… I thought I could prove to myself…’ The words died away when I realised how empty they sounded. And she didn’t believe me, anyway. What was the point in telling more lies?

‘I could smooth this over,’ she said. ‘If you return the keys and come back with me, I could excuse you for a moment of madness. I could say that it was just the last of the enchantment still clinging to you. Not everyone would believe that, but they’d accept it so long as they get the outcome they want.’

I said nothing. Outcome was a fine way to phrase tying someone to a post and setting them on fire. Which Draven himself had done, I reminded myself. He’d burned people. The inhumanity of the act was not a good enough reason to spare him from it.

‘Or,’ she continued after a long silence, stepping further into the room, ‘I could let you finish what you came here to do.’

‘What?’

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, as though she was about to say something that would result in her being torn apart. ‘I will never forgive him for the wrongs he has done, but I will let you release him. I’ll let you get him out of the city and save his life.’ Another pause. Then, ‘if you’ll go with him.’

Had I misheard her? She was talking about the man who had stolen her throne and dragged her kingdom into a war. He’d torn down the Sanctum and the Guild, been responsible for more deaths than I could even begin to tally, and he was dangerous even without magic. ‘Is this some kind of test?’

She shook her head. ‘No test. Just an offer. The choice is yours.’

‘Why would you offer that? Is it because I’m done being useful to you? Do you want to discard me now and this is the perfect way to do it?’

She stepped closer and took my hand. ‘Rhi, I love you,’ she said. ‘But I can’t trust you.’

I flinched, tried to pull my hand back, but she held on tight.

‘And while you’re in my court, no one will trust me,’ she continued, her expression beseeching now. ‘They’ll think you’re manipulating me. I’m already trying to rebuild and alter our entire political system. I don’t need any extra doubt or suspicion. You have done so much for me, but the tally against you, the things you’ve done… I can’t ignore that either.’

‘So it’s convenient for you to exile me.’

‘It isn’t an exile. You want to go with him.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Rhi, you love him,’ she said firmly. It was as though the words knocked all the fight out of me. My shoulders sagged with the weight of it, with thetruthof it that I’d been denying for so long. ‘I don’t understand why,’ she continued, ‘but it’s clear you do. Everything you’ve done has been for him, to seek revenge on him or protect him or provoke him. And anyone can see he loves you. So stop pretending. Take his life as your due for all you’ve done for me. Go with him.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘But if you do, you can never come back.’

I stared back at her, searching her wide blue eyes, seeing all I’d done to test her trust, seeing how desperately she wanted to hold onto her loyalty to me all the while knowing how it was fraying and becoming more and more difficult to justify. Shecouldn’ttrust me. Her courtwouldn’ttrust me. And suddenly I was so tired. So, so tired. Exhausted by the thought of the politics to come, the wrangling and the shmoozing and the double-dealing and negotiating that it would take to win and rebuild her kingdom.

I pulled her in, wrapped my arms around her. Her breath shuddered out in a sob as she hugged me back.

‘You’re going to be a brilliant queen,’ I whispered. ‘A far better one than I ever was.’

She pulled away, swiping at her eyes. ‘I would never have had a chance to learn that if you hadn’t been one first.’

‘Just don’t let them push you around,’ I said, my voice thick. ‘You’ve fought damn hard to sit on that throne. You deserve to be there.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll remember that. I promise.’

The quiet was shaken by distant shouts, the sounds of alarm and activity. Gwin glanced at the door, which was still shut. But perhaps not for much longer, if the chaos I’d caused on my path to the keys in my skirt had been found.

‘I’m going to go and buy you some time,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘But I don’t think I’ll get you much. Don’t linger.’ She delayed only one more moment, long enough for me to scan her face, to see in it all the ways she’d grown from that hesitant, nervous girl I’d first met in the infirmary. How she’d managed that growth while still holding onto that compassion, that softness, that belief in the good of those around her that was letting her do what she was doing now was beyond me, but I knewthatwas what set her apart from the rest of us, with our fear and our suspicion and our scheming and our power-grabbing.Thatwas why she would be a ruler the likes of which the three kingdoms had never seen.

And then she was slipping back out of the room, closing the door behind her with a final, echoing thud. My heart ached to lose sight of her, already missing the way her strength and her idealism made the world around me seem lighter and less hopeless.

But the time to mourn endings wasn’t now.

I flew to the cell door, wrenching the ring of keys out of my skirt, fingers trembling as I began jamming keys into the lock, focusing entirely on cycling through them, on finding the one that fit. Thinking not at all about what I wasdoing. I didn’t have time to allow the doubt in if I still wanted to have a choice in the matter. Because it was not the choice itself that terrified me, but the fact that I was making the choice forhim. The sounds beyond the door were growing louder. I fumbled the keys. Gasped as I dropped them. Bent to scoop them up only to have them fall form my clumsy, shaking fingers again.

‘Fuck, fuck,fuck,’I swore, panic swirling around my head and blurring my vision, the impossible pace of my heartbeat rendering me breathless as I picked them up and couldn’t seem to make the next key meet the lock, like the hole had shrunk. A pair of hands caught mine between them, stilling the trembling.

‘Breathe,’ Draven said. I looked up at him through the bars, felt myself steady in the hold of his gaze. Took a breath. Smoothly, he guided me to the lock. I focused on the warmth of his hands as the sounds beyond the door seemed to draw closer, then further. The key turned. The lock clicked. And then the door was swinging open, and his arms were around me for just a moment, just long enough for me to catch another, fuller breath, to inhale the smell of him and let it soothe me.

Because then we were running.

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