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“Can I do anything for you, Lark?”
She was asking if I needed help. But I didn’t deserve it. My heart gave a small hiccup. “I fear, after all I’ve done, I am beyond saving.”
“That cannot be true. Justice is fair, balance is all, we will hear your experiences—”
“I don’t need you to tell me what I already know.” I turned away, but she called me to a halt.
“Lark, I will see to it your voice is heard.”
The hiccup in my chest surged up my throat and a sudden swell of emotion choked me. I gave a nod, because my voice was gone.
That was all I’d ever wanted… for my voice to be heard.
I put my hand on the door handle. I didn’t want to go back to that room, back to him. I’d done my part, told Justice what I knew, and perhaps it would help with whatever came next. If I went back, Razak would use me to hurt Arin at his joining ceremony. And it wouldn’t stop there. He’d use me again and again, taking more and more pieces of me.
But there was one more thing I could do, one final act that might balance out my mistakes. An act that would end the cycle and rob Razak of power.
“Was there something else?” Noemi asked.
“Yes, do you own a dagger?”
CHAPTER24
Lark
I hurried backto Razak’s bedchamber and my room without being seen. After locking the door, I slipped the key back underneath. Hopefully he’d think it had fallen free.
I kicked the twisted lampshade under the bed, laid Noemi’s knife on the pillow, and paced. The cuff still hung from the bedpost, where I’d left it. For my escape to go unnoticed, I had to force my wrecked hand back through that metal cuff.
The window drew my eye, and the full, fat moon hanging low behind a neighboring tower. The rain must have eased for the moon to peek through. It wouldn’t last. The storms always returned.
Why was I delaying?
Blood and pain, it was my fucking life.
I pulled off my clothes, re-folded them, tucked them away, and returned, naked, to the bed. The bloody cuff lay on the pillow, mocking.
Noemi’s knife lay close too, waiting for its time to shine.
Pain did not control me.Icontrolled it.
I grabbed the cuff and forced my bruised hand back through. Scabbed wounds tore afresh. Blood dribbled again. “Gods…” Nausea and heat rolled over me. I shuddered, panting. But it was done.
Razak would see the blood, he’d see my hand, and of course, he’d see the knife. But it wouldn’t matter by then.
With the cuff now holding my right arm aloft, I knelt on the pillow and wrapped my left hand’s fingers around the knife’s handle.
Would Arin want this?
Did he wish me dead every night before closing his eyes and dreaming of us together on his moonlit beach or in his bed?
It would have been good to speak with him, one last time. The Prince Behind the Door, who had vexed and confused me. He’d probably never be able to juggle all that well. Was there a world out there that wasn’t bitter and twisted, a world in which we maybe could have lived, he and I? Perhaps that was what came after life, perhaps death was a forever dream? Although I surely did not deserve to dream of a happy ending.
I pressed the tip of Noemi’s blade to my wrist.
The half prince from the gutter, Umair had called me, while my mother looked on, the noose around her neck. And then she’d swung.
Perhaps I would meet her again in whatever happens after life… This was the right thing. The only thing. Arin would be safe, my first and last gift to him. And he’d never know.
