Page 415 of Flirting with Darkness

Still hunched over, he nods. “You’re right. But I like it better when you speak in my mind.”

“What? Why?”

The king sucks in a great lungful of air and stares skyward before standing fully. As is his habit, he takes his time answering, staring into my eyes until gracing me with a reply. “Your voice feels like home to me.”

I step back, hands flying up between us as if to block the words entirely. “Wha—? What does…” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. What was he trying to say?

The smile, the softer affect despite the kick to his berries, all of it drops away, as if it had never been there at all. “You mean, you didn’t run off for me to find you because you accept our fate?”

I shake my head. “What are you going on about? Speak plainly!”

His face goes fully dark, like he’d conjured a shadow and pulled it over himself. “I see, then. You were trying to escape.” He runs a hand through his dark hair before rubbing the back of his neck. “You weren’t initiating. You were running from me.”

“Initiating? What are you talking about?!”

He swallows several times before finally saying anything. “Never mind.” He reaches for me, but I dodge his grasp.

“I’m done playing games with you, King Don’t-Ask-Me-Questions. I want to know what you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t miss my hand this time. “It was my mistake. It won’t happen again,” he says, honeyed voice going icy.

He tugs me forward, but I stay put. “I’m not going with you. I have to help that woman.”

He rubs his forehead and lets out a long sigh. “You cannot, Liesl. It is not the way of things.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care about your ways. Life is sacred, even inferior human life, and I won’t stand by and let that woman—”

“Even inferior human life?” he questions, expression inscrutable.

“Yes. I know what you think of me. What you think of my kind. We’re slow and unintelligent and clearly not worth the bother of saving, but—”

He leans forward and pulls me even closer. His breath whispers across my cheek. “How many times must I keep you safe and clothed and fed for you to believe that’s not who I am? When will you stop seeing me as the demon your world created? I care for you deeply, Liesl. Why are you so blind to that fact?”

My eyes bulge, and I look to the night sky, searching for the reason he’s saying such ridiculous things. How can he stand there and lie to my face? “You can’t care for someone you intend to murder. Righteous or not.”

He steps back, expression going slack. “Murder?”

I shake my head, unwilling to hear him tell me yet again that this is simply the order of things. That my execution isn’t murder. “Send me back! If you care for me at all, then save that poor woman and send me back to my manor and out of this awful place! Send me back or kill me here and now, but don’t keep torturing me with this endless maze of eternal dark and trees that wish to eat me. Don’t prolong my suffering anymore.” Tears of rage sting the gouges in my face and I lay into him further. “Was that your game this whole time? Were you trying to break me? Trying to make me insane by forcing me to walk with you to my execution? Is that what your sick mind finds pleasure in?”

The king takes another step away from me, and he releases my hands. “Is that what you think? Is that what you think we’re doing here?”

“You said I had to pay for my crimes and brought me here. What else am I supposed to think?”

The king shakes his head at me. “I’ve made a grave mistake,” he murmurs, and with a wave of his hand, there’s another flash of brilliant light.

I’m falling for a lifetime.

Squeezed through a pinhole.

And I’m back in the cellar, iron lock and chain on the ground surrounded by boards that were once twelve sides of the chest.

In my favorite dress and muck boots.

I fall to the packed dirt ground, exhausted, relieved, but also heartbroken.

My shoulders shake as I take in a shuddering breath. A guttural sob wrenches past my throat and once it’s beyond my lips, I can’t stop the silent tears racking me.

For what, I don’t know.

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