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“Why did it have to beyou?” I retort. “I’m the princess, the heiress of the throne, that’s why it had to be me. It’s been me ever since I was born, hasn’t it? They were just waiting for the right moment. But you… You were just a soldier. You were just a random boy. It’s not fair. It should have been someone else. Someone who wouldn’t care. It shouldn’t have been you.”
He stops crying, loosens his hold on my hand. He turns and looks me straight in the eyes.
“No,” he says, his voice clear and strong. “It should be me. Only me.”
My lips part, and I just stare and stare at the planes of his cheekbones and the sharp, straight line of his nose. The aquamarine of his eyes. The stubble on his chin. The cropped hair on his head, its light buzz turning golden in the firelight.
“Say it, please,” he says quietly, and his lips are dripping with tears. “Say that it should have been me and no one else. Say that you wouldn’t have it be someone else here with you, today. Say it, even if it’s a lie.”
I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back so hard, he almost crushes bones.
‘Will you hold my hand?’was the last thing he told me when he left me at that lake. The last thing he asked for before he went to his death.
“It’s not a lie,” I tell him. “I would rather die with you than do a million stupid normal things with anyone else.”
He chuckles, the sound wet with tears. “I would do a million stupid normal things with you in a second,” he says gruffly. His hand is on my neck, drawing me to his shoulder. “My queen.”
“Don’t—” I stop. Why pretend I don’t like it when I always go weak in the knees whenever he calls me that? Like it’s not the sexiest thing on the planet? When it is. I lick my lips. “Why do you call me that?”
He smiles, his finger idly tracing circles with my hair on my temple. It’s dried almost completely, and clouds wildly over my face. But he touches it with so much tenderness, as if it’s the softest silk in existence.
“It’s because you are,” he says. “When I took the job… Well, I wasn’t planning on doing it no matter who it was, but I hadn’t met you yet.”
I shudder and he pulls me closer.
“What were you planning to do?”
“Die,” he replies at once. “But hopefully save you in the process. I did not even consider refusing it; I was a marked man from the moment they offered me the deal. I would be dead faster than the ‘no’ would leave my lips. And as I said, I knew that if I did refuse, they would next give it to another person, who would gladly do it. So it had to be me.”
“It had to,” I murmur, numbly.
There’s a brief pause of all noise outside. The rain has stopped completely. No footsteps either. Just absolute silence. The quiet before the storm.
“But that was before I actually met you,” Marco goes on. “As soon as I did, within the first few days of being your coach and getting to know you a little, I found out how humble and smart and gorgeous and strong you are… And that was when I decided.”
“What did you decide?”
“That you were worth it. Not as a random human being who should live and not be assassinated. As yourself. As you. As this specific, amazing, gorgeous girl. As m—” he chokes on the words, his voice clogged with tears. “As my own, personal queen.”
I wipe my neck with the back of my hand. I have given up on wiping my cheeks; they are constantly wet with tears, but now my neck too is dripping with them, and it’s itchy.
“Are you saying that you fell in love with me, just after coaching me for two days?” I smirk through my tears, hoping to show him how idiotic it sounds.
But he doesn’t smile back. Not even a little.
“No,” he says slowly, his chest pressing into my shoulder as I’m sitting practically on top of him. The bulletproof vest digs into my stomach, but it also warms me a little bit. It makes me nauseous just to think of why I have it on—so I don’t. I focus on him. “That happened much later,” he adds.
I open my mouth to ask him what he means, but I don’t get a chance to.
Because that’s when the shooting starts.
/Marco/
[audio transcript]
We’re on the road again now, mom.
I can’t take her back to the university, because they are waiting to kill us both there. Me for not obeying and her because… well, she is her. Her assassination has been decided. I tried to leave her so many times… Did I tell you that already?
