Who have I got to tell?
I shake my head.
He swallows, nodding slowly, then pushes between me and the table. Leaning against it, he weaves his arm around my back, pulling me closer, and straddles me with his outstretched legs. “Rest assured, you’resafehere. Nothing can get through that wall, and even if it did, I could crumble the bridge in seconds.”
A wave of nausea makes the insides of my cheeks tingle, but I keep my face smooth. Pretend I’m the girl he met in Castle Noir as I look up at him with worry-filled eyes. “Really?”
He tucks a loose tendril behind my still-damp hair, making me want to flinch away.
“Flick of a lever …”
No …
He grazes his lips across my knuckles again, holding my gaze. “I’ve been quietly building up the outer islands. Our future is certain, no matter how far the Vruk infestation spreads.”
My heart dives, mind churning, the world seeming to fall out from under me …
No wonder he wants to keep his fleet to himself. His back up planrelieson it, but at a steep cost.
Everyone else on the continent.
Again, I think of those ships—of the flames that tore them to shreds.
A single word powers through my mind, spoken in his blunt voice while his people sizzled and screamed …
Sacrifices.
Izel retrieves my tray from the late-night meal Cainon insisted upon and leaves without noticing me tucked beneath a table in the corner of the room—knees bent, chisel in my hand, empty knapsack slung over my shoulder.
The door clicks shut.
I look at the pristine, perfectly made bed. At the starched white sheets, crisp and clean and so unlike my blackened conscience. I close my eyes and hear the crunching sound that severed arm made when I rolled over it. Feel the wet flesh smearing across me like a warm paste.
My skin erupts with a violent shiver that rattles my organs, and I smack my head against the wall.
No.
Swallowing thickly, I weave my fingers beneath my cloak and scratch at the itch flaring across my tender shoulder, choking on the stab of pain.
The memory.
Refusing to look at the huge, golden urn in the corner of the room that now houses the crystal bloom so I don’t have to see it every time I open my drawer, I keep my head tipped back against the stone, watching the ever-bloating moon through the glass balcony doors …
The gravity of everything that happened today punches me in the gut.
I’m not going to bleed for him. But with the sting attacking the blistering skin on my tender wrist in deep, painful throbs, I refuse to feel guilty.
He once told me it’s in our nature to fall in love with the shackle that binds us, but I am no regular person. I signed up for this political pairing for a fleet I’m yet to receive. To save lives.
Make a difference.
Instead, I’m spending my days trying to clamber out of a basin, reaching for empty promises like a string puppet. Destroying myself.
Destroying others.
It’s become blatantly obvious Cainon has very little interest in parting with his ships—helping the people I grew up watching through the peephole in the throne room. A theory backed by the fact that he keeps dangling them just out of reach.
Chances are, his word doesn’t stand for shit, and I just gave him a perfect reason to whip them further away. Or burn me at the stake.
