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“She stood in front of a man who’d challenged her, and she was fucking smug about herself when the people immediately backed her. She knew she was the deadliest thing in that bar, and she was utterly fearless. I remained furious, because it was the heat of the moment.”
“Tell me there’s a bloody point to your ramble, or I’m going to walk out of here,” I growl.
“She told him there’d be more massacres, and she meant it. She intends to dedicate a lot of time to following through on that promise. And she let them know, without any sort of directly spoken threat, those who fraternize with traitors won’t be overlooked. And knew they got the point.”
“The point you’re getting to?” I prompt when he pauses.
He smirks, but it seems to be to about something in his mind that he’s not sharing. “I was so pissed at her for making a move like that. I told her she sounded like you, but later I realized you’d have just killed the entire bar if they’d had a problem with you taking this individual out.”
I just stare at the idiot.
“I missed it when it happened, but Ella found herself. And she’s no longer asking for anyone’s permission. Not even ours. She’s waiting on us to catch up with
her, because deep down she knows we’ll listen when it counts. We’re the naïve ones.”
“You’re a daft cunt,” I argue. “You’re far past the point of naivety if you think for one second any of this changes my mind.”
“Kane told me today we had over two hundred new men show up for tonight’s battle, and they’ve helped evacuate Pine Shore.”
His eyes cut to mine.
“There were only twenty in that bar,” he adds.
“What does that have to do with a damn thing?”
“It didn’t hit me until later, when I was lying there and thinking about it, that she also let them know the royal family would be cleaning these things up—not with false promises or elegant words, but with brute actions. Hence the reason these men wanted to join. If you want to help, you better be working for the royal family and not a mob. She chose her words carefully, even though they seemed so natural and almost careless.”
“And?” I ask, wondering what the fucking hell that damn girl has been up to.
He shrugs. “We’ve all forgotten one important thing: Ella’s got royal blood. Just like her mother, who was the youngest person on the battlefield once upon a time.”
“Royal blood? They come from a strong lineage that makes them royals. There’s no such thing as actual royal blood,” I growl.
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Yes, there is. Their blood makes them different from all of us. I’ve witnessed it before with Alyssa, and now I’m witnessing it with Ella. They have blood so primal and so alpha, that it radiates power generation after generation. We forget that they were born to lead, but they know it. They feel it. And they command when the time comes.”
My jaw grinds as he slowly stands.
“She’s had everyone telling her she isn’t strong enough. She admits she’s not ready to rule, but that she is ready to be heard,” he goes on. “We’ve simply ignored her when she started telling us she is strong enough; she wouldn’t say it if it weren’t so. It wasn’t easy for her to do so alone, but she’s found herself. We just all missed when it happened. You made her a monster the second you tethered her to centuries of rage, and she’s finally figured out how to embrace it.”
“She can’t control it,” I remind him.
“She doesn’t have to. She just needed to learn to own it so she’d stop fighting her very nature. The same thing I once stood behind Alyssa on. I just forgot to evolve with Ella.”
“Tell me all that when you’ve seen her die a thousand and one times,” I say as I stand and start to walk out.
“I didn’t know her during all those times,” he calls to my back, and I stiffen. “I’ve only known her in this life, and it’s the only one that really exists. The Ella I know could blow this world all to hell before Hannah knew what hit her, and now I think she has the confidence and determination to do it.”
I stalk out, journal in hand, just as my phone goes off with a message from Kane.
“Or she’s got something else entirely up her sleeve,” I hear him say, and I turn as his brow furrows, seeming lost in thought. “That calculative little devil,” he adds before vanishing.
I’m going to kill him for leaving that mystery in the air. I should have killed him for causing even a brief hesitation in my mind for what comes next. What has to happen next.
This is the most important day of my entire existence, and so far, nothing is fucking going the way it needs to.
Fortunately, Kane’s message helps with the most important part.
Ella will forgive him.
