Page 21 of Queen of the Wicked
Seventeen
Adelasia
When I wake, Kaius lies beside me, his arm beneath my neck, the other one curled around my waist, as if afraid I’ll slip between the cracks of this reality again. There’s no warmth from the fireplace, no sound but the gentle whistling of wind against the balcony doors.
I wonder how long he’s been watching me.
His voice comes so quietly, I almost miss it.
“You were screaming.”
My fingers twitch, curling into the sheets as the dream seeps back into my memory. The Well. The Priestesses. My own hand wrapped around a dagger, sinking it deep into the stomach of someone I love.
I don’t speak, not yet. I turn into his chest and press my ear to where his heart should beat. He strokes my hair and traces patterns on my skin with his fingertips.
He still treats me like I’m not falling apart. I can’t pretend otherwise anymore.
“I saw them,” I whisper. “Yekaterina and Amatisi. They were standing at the edge of the Well. And there was something else… something inside me that wasn’t mine. It hated them.”
His hand stills. I feel the tension coil beneath his skin like a viper ready to strike, but he doesn’t speak. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll stop talking.
“I saw myself, too. But I wasn’t…me. I held a dagger and I—” My voice falters. “I killed someone.”
“Who?”
I close my eyes. The image of the man in my dream flickers like broken light, his face shifting too fast to see clearly. Brown hair. Pale eyes. Iridescent wings.
“I don’t know,” I lie. “I think…I think the magic is trying to tell me something. Or maybe warn me.” I sit up slowly, dizzy with the weight of everything. “Kaius…I have to go back.”
“To the Blackwood?” His voice is sharp now, slicing through the stillness. “Absolutely not.”
“I wasn’t asking,” I snap back, more venomously than I mean to. The rot in my fingertips pulses with heat, and I can feel it slithering up my forearms. “If I return the magic to the Well, maybe this—” I gesture to the black in my veins “—can be undone.”
Kaius twists out of the sheets and stands, already shaking his head. “That forest is a death sentence.”
“I’m well aware, Kaius. I’ve already died once, and I will not live the rest of my life hidden in these walls afraid of the shadows.”
A heavy silence swells between us. I hear the door creak, and Rowan slips in like a shadow, grey-eyed and smug.
“She’s right,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “But she’ll die if she walks into that place without control. I’ve been helping her develop–”
“You’vewhat?” Kaius growls.
Rowan ignores him. “You’ve seen her power. You’ve seen what it does when it gets away from her. She needs someone to help her learn to channel it, and you won’t. What choice did I have but to step up and take your place.”
Kaius steps forward, and I see the storm in his eyes before he speaks, but I stop them before this turns into a war.
“Both of you, enough!” My voice cracks through the room, rattling the empty goblets on the table. The magic responds to my fury, curling like smoke around my fingers. “This ismydecision, and it’s been made.”
I breathe, trembling, angry, unsure who I’m more furious at—Kaius for caging me in his fear, or Rowan for acting like he knows my heart better than the man who died with it in his hands.
Kaius opens his mouth like he wants to argue with me, but something in my face must give him the good sense to stop talking. Rowan lingers a moment longer, then they both turn and walk out without a word.
When they’re both gone, I collapse into the silk sheets of my bed, clenching my eyes shut.
Eighteen
Rowan
