“I have no right,” I gasp in the middle of my sentence as Yanami slips her hands under my shirt. Her fingers tease and scratch at my ribs. “I have no right to touch you right now.”
“I know,” she says and captures my lips again.
“Did you hear us? Outside?” I’m gasping for air in between every other word.
She punishes me for talking with a sharp bite to my lip.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers.
“It does,” I try to fight. She’s not having it. Every time I open my mouth, she closes it with her own. “It does.”
She shoves me until my back hits the wall. The window ledge digs a bruise into my spine.
“No. It doesn’t,” she says louder. “You’re the one who believes in fate, so believe it now. Nothing we do tonight will change what happens tomorrow,” her voice crescendos, yet it’s still so quiet, so restrained. It hits my ears like a scream.
Nothing we do tonight will change what happens tomorrow.
It won’t.
I’ve made my choice. I’ve cried over it. I’ve hurt myself for it. I know what fate entails for me, and I’m not going to back down. I’m not going to cower. I’m going to make the hard decision because that’s what heroes do. That’s what I’m destined to do.
But right now, I’m not destined to do anything. I can kiss Yanami, just because I want to.
Chapter 29
The man Yanami’s grandparents chained in the courtyard the next morning is nothing like I expected him to be. He is well built, not too muscular, but lean and young. He must only be a few years older than us.
I was the first out of the room, knowing what I would find and running out as if I’d be able to hide it. Mare stepped out after he heard my door close. The princess was already awake, but took her time following behind me.
When we all meet in the courtyard, she looks at Mare and me with a softness that makes my skin itch. Is it possible to feel regret for something you haven’t done yet?
It doesn’t matter. I don’t have the choice or time to think about it too hard.
“What?” Mare draws out the word with a yawn. “What’s going on?”
The princess doesn’t question anything. She gives me a once-over in the sunlight. We’re dressed the same, but she was right last night. Her mother’s clothes do fit me better. What’s slouchy on her is perfect, if not tight, on me.
Her gaze leaves my body, and I feel a chill at the loss. For how cold she looks now, her eyes were filled with heat when shelooked at me. She glances over to her grandparents but doesn’t greet them. Her focus lands on the man in chains. She tilts her head to the side in consideration of what, I don’t know.
Still, she does not ask a single question.
Is this proof that she knew last night, as my lips were on hers, what would happen today? What I was going to ask her to do? Did she kiss me with that certainty? Or maybe she didn’t see this coming at all, but she’s long since lost any sense of surprise. How many times has she woken up to someone chained, knowing what the person on their knees meant? She said she’s been doing this since she was a child.
She was just a child.
I look at her closed-off face, the plumpness of her lips, and the edge of her cheekbones, her supple skin. She’s no longer the child being forced by her mom to kill, but I am also no longer the hero saving her. I don’t think I ever have been.
“You said you’d do anything to help me to the Sun Staff,” I say, but it sounds like begging. I don’t know what, but I want something. I need it desperately. Maybe her voice, or an agreement, maybe forgiveness.
“It’s always abouthelping. That’s what she told me at the beginning, too,” she says
Her mother, the Inka I got killed, the Inka I hated. Now I follow in her footsteps. Yanami wanted her mother dead for what she did to her. She will never forgive me.
“There’s a boat waiting at the dock for you,” Yanami’s grandfather says.
“Mare, bring me my dagger. You’ll wait for us inside,” I say.
“No,” he replies immediately.
