Page 72 of Xantera
“You mean what if you don’t want to?”
“I didn’t say that,” I insist, but still grapple with the thought. “It’s not that simple. I still want to bring down the Wall. It’s just for a different reason now.”
Sure, in an ideal world, I’d have it all. Saskia would live, the citizens of Xantera would be liberated, and the Twelve wouldn’t even have a tombstone to be remembered by.
But the world isn’t ideal. I know that, and it never will be.
“Love,” my mother says, “is a feeling. Loving someone, though—that’s where you make a choice.”
“And if my choice is… cruel even? What happens if I abandon the very people I was born to protect?”
Justso she lives.
My mother’s gaze strays toward the tombstones again, her features pinching. Unlike me, she actually lived out the details of the war, the blood and screams and dead bodies that stacked up when the vampires invaded. She remembers my grandfather’s head rolling off his shoulders. She remembers the Wall slowly turning into stone until our exile was permanent.
And she remembers how my father decided, one day, that enough was enough. That he would reclaim his lost kingdom or die trying.
She remembers how he died trying.
During the rare times she shifts, I can see the memories plague her mind as if they’re my own: my father, in his monstrous form, sinking his claws into cracks in the Wall and climbing, climbing even when electricity tore through his bones, climbing even though his howls of pain were turning into tortured shrieks. Climbing until a single paw made it to the top of the ledge, where the Third Guardian smiled down at him—and snapped his neck.
My father was dead before his body hit the ground.
And that would have been me, too, if Diggory hadn’t somehow gotten hold of the necklace and threw it for Saskia to pick up. I would have climbed and climbed until I got to the top, most likely too exhausted to fight back against the Guardians when I got there. Now, I know my death would do her more harm than good.
And I can’t die for my people if I can live for her.
“Some people choose the world,” my mother finally whispers. “And for some people, the world is one person.” She lays a soft hand over mine without looking at me. “Choosing your love over yourself—no matter what that may look like—will neverbe cruel.”
Love. I’ve lived for centuries and don’t know if I’ve ever chosen it over hate and revenge. And I’ve certainly never truly loved a woman. I’ve been a Monster for so long that I’m not sure I even can.
But I do know that a world without Saskia isn’t a world I want to save.
I’d gladly watch it all burn to fucking ash if it meant I could finally get ahold of her and never let go.
The next morning, I wake up to a peculiar sound.
For a moment, grogginess weighs down my eyelids and I stretch out in bed, the soft touch of silken sheets rippling over my body. I moan at the luxurious feel, wondering if I’m dreaming and hoping I never wake up.
Then I jolt upward, my blurry vision slamming into those narrow brown eyes of the servant from last night.
“Guardians, you keep scaring me,” I gasp as Eleni huffs with exasperation near the foot of my bed. The sight of her crossing her arms between those rich velvet drapes, a streak of sunlight slicing across her features, makes everything come rushing back into my skull.
The Choosing. The feast. The dead Chosen One, her blood smeared on the floor. The Third Guardian drinking from my wrist. Thebathtub.
At that last thought, I jerk my head down and my hands scrabble at my chest, where—
The necklace is gone.
For the second time since I was prodded into this prison of a palace, terror rips through my veins where Lucan’s electric presence usually resides. I may have been in blissful oblivion after my… experience with him last night, but I distinctly remember getting out of the bathtub, throwing on the nightgown laid out for me, and falling into this immense, heavenly soft bed with the necklaceon.
My breaths become ragged as I search the sheets and pillows around me, until Eleni gives another huff, lifts up the corner of my mattress, and points.
I scramble out of bed to find the vial just barely peeking out from where it’s been stuffed deep between mattress and frame, the chain coiled tightly around it.
“Oh.” I exhale at Eleni. “You took it off of me and hid it. Because…” I glance at her and catch her eye roll. “Because I’m stupid and I should have done that myself. Do the Guardians regularly make unannounced visits?”
She nods curtly, her lips twitching, and I can’t help but smile in a flood of relief—not just because Lucan is still here, but because apparently, I lucked out with a servant who’s going to help me rather than rat me out, regardless of all her glares.
