I blink away the tears welling in my eyes and see something flicker in Dane’s. He thinks I’m afraid of him, that I’ve surrendered to him, but I won’t. I won’t stop trying to get out, no matter how long it takes.
All the love in Dane’s eyes has vanished, and I stare at him, raising my chin to avoid the cut of the edge, waiting for his next move. I’m nothing to him. I never was anything more than the means to get what he wants.
“I won’t help you. You’ll have to kill me,” I spit at him, and he pushes the blade deeper into my throat.
“You will,” he spits back. “Because if you don’t, I will spend the rest of eternity hunting down every single fucking Castaway, and making sure they know exactly who is responsible for their fate.”
My throat bobs at his threat. He chose the one thing he knows would make me suffer.
“You know,” he continues, “I thought maybe you would be enough and I could just have you instead. You were so willing and desperate. Since I couldn’t have her, I’d just take you. You look enough like her that it was easy at first.” A look of disgust passes over his face and his lip curls up before he spits out the next words. “But you’re too much like him.”
My heart pounds in my ears and my body shakes as Dane’s fingertips dig deeper into the sides of my neck.
I’m too much like my father. Something that weeks ago I told Weston I never wanted, but maybe here, with Dane, that piece of me I tried to fight may have helped save me from being completely under his spell.
I open my mouth to respond, trying to find the right words to sling back at the obvious disgust he has for me. My thoughts are muddled with everything that has happened and the throbbing pain in my skull, and I can’t find the right ones. My throat works in silence, for barely a moment, before something happens.
Dane’s face changes before my eyes. His mouth falls slack and his shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t move, not even a hairsbreadth as a voice breaks the silence between us.
“I will plunge this sword straight through your gods damn throat if you don’t get your fucking hands off her.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Weston.
I can barely contain a sob when I hear the growl of his voice. He found me. I don’t know how, but he did.
A slow, wicked smile spreads over Dane’s bloodied face.
“So, after all this time, Weston finally decides to come out of hiding.”
“No one is hiding. I just had no reason to speak to you ever again,” he grumbles.
I can’t see him. Dane is holding me too close that I can’t see past him, but the relief that washes over me knowing he’s there, that I’m not alone, is immediate.
“Until now, it seems.” Dane’s eyes are wild, but he stays unmoving, and I have no doubt that Weston has his sword trained on Dane’s neck, just like he promised.
“Drop the dagger. Now,” Weston barks, but Dane doesn’t lower it.
“Or what? You’re going to kill me?” he sneers. “I don’t think you will.”
“For her I will,” Weston snarls. “Put. Her. Down.”
Bile rises in my throat at the thought of Weston following through with his threat. He can’t kill Dane, no matter what he does to me. My eyes scan Dane’s face, his gaze boring into me as he addresses Weston behind him.
“You’re really going to splatter my blood all over her pretty face?” he taunts.
“If it means keeping you away from every person in that family, I’ll do it right now.”
I can’t stay quiet any longer, and I push back against Dane’s hand, trying to wrench myself from his grip.
“Weston!” I scream. “Don’t! Don’t kill him!” Panic laces my voice as I plead with him.
I can’t think about what would happen if Weston became the Guardian. He would be trapped here for eternity or until death, after so many years of trying to return home. I’d have to live without him, or stay here with him, but he would never let me.
“Interesting,” Dane says quietly, scanning my face. He makes a clucking noise with his tongue, and his eyes turn devious. “Seems like you have been unfaithful, Lennox. Not a noble quality in a future queen, if you ask me.”
“You can’t be faithful to something that was all lies,” I grind out.
