AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He lay in the bed, paler than ever, but those dark eyes locked on me. His dark curls looked damp with sweat and fever. He was awake, he was alive, and I felt a traitorous surge of joy.
“Please don’t,” Kessily begged him. “Tor, you could be killed.”
But while Zehr must have warned him moments before, now Zehr only had eyes for me. “Honor.”
“Asshole.”
His servants looked horrified, but Zehr’s lips curled up at the corners.
“Determined to save me too like you are everyone else?”
“Only because saving you is key to saving everyone else.” If he wasn’t lying about that too. I couldn’t risk it, though.
I crossed to him and before Tor could touch him, I tried to lift Zehr’s bone crown off his wild curls. The crown resisted as if it were part of him. Zehr winced in pain, tried to raise his hand to stop me but didn’t have the strength. Kessily started forward, worry written across her face, as Zehr’s arm collapsed to his side. I stepped back.
“It can’t be removed that easily,” Tor warned me. “It can only be taken as part of the transfer ceremony.”
But I was sure I’d seen him in our dreams without it. In our dreams, Zehr’s dark hair waved freely in the wind, and he smiled down at me.
“A ceremony which will kill anyone who’s not meant to be his heir,” Kessily worried.
My eyes went straight to Zehr’s face. “You were going to not just pass this burden to Arren, you were going to run the risk it would justkill him?”
His eyes had closed again. I thought at first he was pretending, so I pinched him, but he didn’t stir.
“He’s dying, Kessily!” Tor exploded at her. “We can’t just stand by and watch him die. The Scourge are becoming restless… they need a king.”
“Are you worried about their needs or are you giving in to your ambition now that you think you can? Without him snapping your neck from the shadows?” Kessily bit back.
Then they glanced at me sideways as if they were trying to decide if it mattered to them if I overheard. I debated which side I was on; I needed a king of the Scourge to control the monsters, but I also needed for him to be willing to help me end the Scourge. I wasn’t sure if I could convince Tor to protect the rest of the isle if he became the new Scourge king.
Tor said, “Kessily, I’m sorry, I can’t live like this anymore.”
“But we have each other.” Her voice broke. “Even if we live under the bone mountain.”
He hesitated.
“That’s never been enough for you,” she said tautly. “Having me.”
“If I take the throne,” he said, “I’ll do what Zehr wasn’t willing to do. I’ll take the Royal throne. We won’t have to hide like this anymore, the way he caged us—”
Ah fuck, he was definitely not going to be a good Scourge king. Zehr, for all his lies and manipulations and violence, at least tried to protect the people from the Scourge… most of the time.
“Zehr will survive,” I said. “You don’t need to take the crown from him.”
“And if he was awake, if he could get out of bed, you couldn’t—” Kessily began.
He lunged and grabbed the crown. Zehr didn’t wake, but his hands reached to grip Tor’s forearms, trying to push him away.
Tor muttered words in an old Fae language, and the crown came away in his hands.
Tor yanked away the crown and settled it onto his own head.
For a second, triumph was written across his unseeing face.
Then he fell away to ash.
Kessily tried to grab him, screaming, but he fell through her fingers as he disintegrated. She collapsed on Zehr’s dark marble floor, raking her hands through the ashes where her lover had been.
