Page 52 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Because if she did…

There was no way she’d have the strength to endure the challenges she suspected awaited.

“H-he just sneaked up on me,” Ardow said shakily, and her eyes locked with his glazed ones. “I didn’t mean to fall for him. He was only supposed to be our source in the election. But I did, Lessia. I fell hard. He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever met.”

Ardow cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to lie to him, but it was too dangerous. Especially… especially with you there. I couldn’t risk it. But I grew careless, and that last night… I was going to tell him everything, I swear! But then Loche’s soldiers found us. And… you know the rest.”

Lessia shook her head. “Ard. What have you gotten yourself into?”

Her eyes widened when a sob shook Ardow’s body, and when his face scrunched, wetness touching his cheeks, she couldn’t stop herself from crawling over and wrapping her arms around him.

She knew the pain gleaming in his eyes all too well.

What Ardow had done to Venko…

It wasn’t so different from what she’d done to Loche.

Tears trickled down her arm as Ardow cried against her shoulder, and she hugged him tighter when he whispered, “I’m sorry, Lessia. I promise I want to make it right.”

Resting her chin on his head, she whispered back, “We’ll make it right together.”

As his body shook against hers, she prayed that she could keep that promise.

ChapterFourteen

She wiped her forehead as she walked beside Merrick and Raine up the small path from the beach.

They’d been training every day for a week, and while she’d not stabbed Merrick again, she’d gotten better at handling the Vincere—which she’d gathered was the name of the liquid Rioner’s father had invented.

Not that Merrick had held her stabbing him against her.

On the contrary, he urged her daily to do it again.

But she couldn’t.

Anger might be the only thing keeping her upright right now—especially with all the emotions draining her, thanks to waiting for her father’s response, not knowing how Amalise and the rest were faring, and wondering how her family would react when she undid her magic…

But Merrick didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of it.

While she couldn’t necessarily describe him as kind—not with how he growled and barked at her when she lost focus trying to withstand his or Raine’s attacks—he at least didn’t push her outside of training.

Not like Ardow, who, after that night when she’d let him sleep in her room like old times, hadn’t stopped asking her about Loche and what happened in that room.

He believed she needed to “talk it out.”

Relive the memories so that she could move past them.

As if her dreams at night weren’t filled with cold gray eyes, stolen moments in a cave, and the shattering of her heart as a wooden door slammed shut behind her.

It had gotten to the point that Lessia flew up from bed every day at the first trickles of sunlight through her window, grabbed something to go from Raine’s quickly emptying kitchen, and spent the morning running up and down the beach until Merrick and Raine showed up to continue painting her body black and blue every time they overpowered her.

She stretched her arms over her head, wincing at their soreness.

Each night, she’d stumble into bed, exhausted and with every limb aching.

Lessia sighed.

And they hadn’t even begun incorporating their magic into training yet…

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