Page 71 of To Wake a Kingdom

A fresh wave of tears engulfed me, pulling me under and drowning me in the turbulence of its undertow.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

2 days left

Fordays,Ilayin bed, somewhere between conscious thought and the brittle pieces of my sanity. Kianna brought me food, but everything became ash in my mouth. Snow fell in thick flakes, wind screaming through the halls as if it, too, were mourning the bottomless depths of my loss.

The ticking countdown of Mare’s return throbbed through the walls and the floors of the castle. In my ears and in my head, a constant insistent sound pounded against the inside of my skull. But I no longer dreaded the checking of those last boxes on the calendar. Now I counted them down, minute by minute, because when Mare came back, I’d make sure she killed me.

When I finally got up, I was driven only by the need to say one last goodbye to my family. My limbs were hollow, like tarnished flutes that only played off-key. The castle was dark, and I couldn’t tell if it was day or night as the snow streaked in horizontal lines across every window.

My body achy and stiff, I grabbed my father’s sword sitting propped at the foot of my bed. The cold iron felt solid in my hands. Dragging the tip along the ground like an anchor, I entered the hall, passing Kianna’s bedroom. It sat empty as I shuffled past. My stomach growled, and my throat was dry from neglecting food and water.

The halls were so quiet, devoid of Em’s jokes and Noah’s laughter and Gideon’s patient caretaking. And Ronan. His absence felt as if every drop of blood had been sucked from my heart. As if every star had fallen from the sky. As if every ocean had been drained of water.

With slow, measured steps, I stumbled toward the throne room, the scrape of the sword on stone echoing off the walls.Darkness spread beneath my feet like spilled tar. It slid along the stones, sticky and viscous. A tang seeped into the air, tickling a memory I couldn’t place. The blackened pool grew under my boots as I ventured closer. Not a pool—a trail, winding its way like a steady mountain stream. Lights flared ahead of me, and I squinted against a sudden brightness that revealed a spooling river of crimson.

Confusion blurred my thoughts, one piling on another in a jumble.

Why was there blood on the floor?

As my vision cleared, a nail hammered into the meaty, pulsing center of my heart.

Everyone was dead.

I stared and stared, unable to process what I was seeing. Slits in their throats. Hearts ripped from their chests. Heads torn off and discarded on the floor like they were nothing but useless trinkets.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Viciously. Violently dead.

My mother slumped forward, blood coating the front of her pristine white gown. My father’s head lay at her feet, eyes still closed in an enchanted sleep from which he would never awaken.

Blood was everywhere.

In the haze of my thoughts, all I could see was a thick red crest, like a tidal wave drowning me. I blinked, willing the image to change. This wasn’t real. This was only a nightmare. This was an oil painting hanging in a vengeful god’s living room.

This wasn’t real.This couldn’t be real.

In my grief, I was hallucinating.

But Mare stood in the center of the room, a cruel twist on her lips. Kianna lay at her feet, crumpled and still.

“No, no, no,” I said, surprised I was capable of sound. “No, no, no.” I was shaking. “No, what did you do?”

No. No. No. No. No.

Mare placed a hand on a jutted hip. “You didn’t break the curse. We had a deal, Princess.”

“I still had two more days,” I whispered, my heart pounding against the iron bars in my chest. “I still had two more days.”

“Oh please. You weren’t going to break it, and we both know it. Your darling prince is gone.”

She knew, too. Knew how to break it and let me dangle on a fraying string. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I knew I’d lost and Mare would come, but I didn’t get to say goodbye. At the very least, I deserved that much. After everything, she owed me that.

“I had two more days,” I whispered. The words felt heavy in my mouth. Like something I could dig up from the earth and salvage in my grasp. “I had two more days,” I said again, my voice gathering volume. “I had two more days!” I screamed it so loud, the flames in the sconces seemed to shudder with the force of my rage. “I had two. More. Fucking. Days!”

Engulfed in a torrent of grief so deep it would take an army to cross, I flew at Mare, not caring what happened to me. I had lost everything. Every single person I’d ever loved was gone. My death was the only way to escape this twisted nightmare.

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