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We stared at each other for what felt like an age, our weapons still trained on each other.
“I want you out of my head.” Rook’s voice was low, his chest still pounding as he drew breath. “I want you gone. Since you got here, since you walked into this fucking palace-“
“I was dragged here, just like you.”
“Nothing like me!” He bellowed.
“I’m a captive, just like you.” I held his gaze, and lowered my sword. His eyes flickered downward for a moment, noting the movement, and then flashed back up to mine, pressing the blade of his ax harder into my throat. “Are you going to kill me now?”
His eyes widened with rage. “Yes.”
The humming in my chest was so loud now, my jaw began to tremble along with it. I put a hand on his chest, over his heart. “Then do it.”
He cried out as though I’d burned him, staggering away from me. He put a hand to where I’d touched him, looking down as though he expected to see a mark. His wild eyes moved back to me.
“What the fuck did you do to me?”
I pushed myself up on my hands slowly. “I did nothing.”
“You stay the fuck away from me.” He pointed the ax at me again. “You- you fuckingwitch, you stay the fuck away from me, do you understand?”
“You’re in my dreams, and I am in yours.” I got to my feet, his eyes fixed on my every move. “And we both say we’re not doing it to one another.”
Rook scoffed, and spat into the dirt. “Why would I want to have dreams like that aboutyou? A fucking traitorous fucking Fae bitch?”
“And you believe I’d want to dream such things about you?” I took a step towards him. “You could have killed me, and you chose not to.”
“And I could say the same for you.” He lowered the ax, letting the head butt into the ground with a soft thump. “I told you to, Ichallengedyou to, you coward, and-“
“You don’t want to kill me.”
He jerked back a little. “What?”
“You don’t want to kill me, any more than I want to kill you.”
I became aware of the guards at the perimeter of the training yard, leaning on their spears, watching us intently. They would convey every word of this conversation back to Theron. Rook sneered at me, as though coming up with a snide remark to throw my way, but then his face dissolved into something else, something I couldn’t quite read. He rolled his shoulders, averting his eyes, lifting the ax and swinging it onto his shoulder.
“You swear you’re not casting a spell on me?”
I shook my head. “No. I wouldn’t even know how. I-I can’t do that.” I paused for a moment, watching him shift on his feet. “And you?”
“Me what?”
“You’re not -“
“No,” he snapped, and his eyes met mine again. “All those stories, they’re all lies. I don’t do that. I’veneverdone that.”
“I believe you.”
He snorted. “I don’t really fucking care if you do.” He gestured around us. “My father did not abandon me to this. My father isnothinglike yours. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“And you and I are nothing alike.” He swallowed hard, and he huffed out a breath. “You know nothing about me, and I don’t want to know anything about you. We train,here, and that’s all. That isall,do you understand?”
I nodded. I clenched my hand, the one I’d lain on his chest, at the same time as he put a hand over his heart, rubbing as though trying to erase a stain. He shook his head, and without another word he strode from the arena, hurling his weapon into the wooden rack on his way.
I watched him leave, the feeling of his skin burning on my hand and that humming in my chest getting louder and louder.
