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Aren dropped to his knees in front of her, gripping the sides of her face, his fingers tangling in her hair. Tears glinted in his eyes. “Ilovedyou. I trusted you. With myself. With my kingdom.”
Loved. Past tense. Because she’d never deserved his love, and now she’d lost it for good.
“And you were only using me. Only pretending. It was all an act. A ploy.”
“No!” She wrenched the word from her lips. “At first, yes. But after . . . Aren, I love you. Please believe that, if nothing else.”
“I used to wonder why you never said it. Now I know.” His grip on her face tightened, then he jerked his hands away. “You say it now only because you’re trying to save your own skin.”
“That’s not true!”
Explanations fought each other to make it out of her mouth first. Ways to make him understand. Ways to make him believe her. They all died on her lips as he fished the knife out of the mud.
“I should kill you.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest like a caged bird.
“But despite everything,everything,you’ve done, I don’t have the balls to stick this blade in your black Maridrinian heart.”
The knife sliced between her wrists, cutting the cord in one clean jerk. He pressed the hilt into the palm of her hand.
“Go. Run. I’ve no doubt that you’ll make it off this island.” His jaw tightened. “It’s in your nature to survive.”
Lara stared at him, her lungs paralyzed. He wasn’t letting her go, he was . . . banishing her. “Please don’t do this. I can fight. I can help you. I can—”
Aren shoved her shoulders with enough force to send her stumbling back. “Go!” Then he reached down and retrieved his bow, nocking one of the black-fletched arrows.
Holding her ground, she parted her lips, desperate not to lose the chance to undo the damage that she’d done. The chance to fight back against her father. To liberate Ithicana.
To win Aren back.
“Go!” He shouted the word at her, leveling the arrow at her forehead even as tears poured down his cheeks. “I never want to see your face. I never want to hear your name. If there were a way to scour you from my life, I’d do it. But until I find the strength to put you in a goddamned grave, this is all I have. Now run!”
His fingers quivered on the bowstring.He would do it. And it would kill him.
Lara twisted in the mud, sprinting up the slope, her arms pumping. Her boots slipped and slid as she jumped over fallen trees and slapped aside ferns.
And stopped. Bracing a hand against a tree, she turned. In time to see his arrow shoot past her face, thudding into the tree next to her.
She pressed a shaking hand against the line scraped against her cheek, a trickle of blood running between her fingers. Eyes fixed on her, Aren pulled another arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and aimed the barbed tip. His lips moved.Run.
She ran, never looking back again.
41
Lara
“Another.”
The barkeep raised one eyebrow over the mug he was polishing with a dirty rag, but made no comment as he refilled her glass with the swill this tap house passed off as wine. Not that it mattered; it wasn’t as though she intended to savor it.
Downing the contents in three gulps, Lara pushed the glass back across the bar. “Fill it.”
“Pretty girl like you could get herself in a bit of trouble drinking the way you do, miss.”
“Pretty girl like me will cut the throat of anyone who gives her trouble.” She gave him a smile that was all teeth. “So how about you don’t tempt fate and you just hand over the bottle.” She shoved a few coins stamped with the Harendell King’s face in the man’s direction. “Here. Saves us having to exchange any more words tonight.”
Wiser than he looked, the barkeep only shrugged, took the coins, and handed her a full bottle of swill. But even drunk, she marked his words. Her face was familiar here. It was time to find a new watering hole to drown herself in every night.
