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Broken hearts will not be the end of my legacy.
- The Zealot King’s Journal: The Unabridged, Unsanctioned Edition
“You two are gods among men,”I whisper. Taking both in, their beautiful new colors, new stronger bodies, tightens my chest and throat.
“Oh, baby, don’t cry,” Bastian says and pulls me back down to the bed into his arms.
“They aren’t sad tears,” I sob into his chest.
Enzo pets my back. “I’ve never understood happy tears.”
Bastian scoffs into my hair. “You don’t understand any tears.”
I sniff and try to put it to words. “It’s life excitement, I suppose. It all crashed into me at once. Malachi is gone. I get to live my life the way I see fit, and I get to do it with men who are made stronger because of me. Looking at your new forms is like a visual reminder that the bad is gone.”
I sit up, gazing at them. “When Gael disappeared, there was a high chance that if I hadn’t found him, Malachi would have forced me to perform the Rites with one of the Elders whose knowledge and power he wanted, and when I came here, I knew there was a possibility that I might fail. I didn’t dwell on that possible future. I couldn’t. But now that I knowthisis my future…”
I give them a teary smile.
“I’m overwhelmed with excitement for my life for the first time in a long time.”
I wipe the tears away and shake my head, releasing the extra emotion into the atmosphere.
Bastian sits up and takes my hand. He kisses the back of it, then turns it over and kisses my wrist, followed by each finger. “You are what I thought was too much to hope for in this life, and I will cherish every moment with you, every inch of you.”
Enzo sits up too.
He puts the mask that hides the darkness in his gaze back up. I frown, about to protest, when he drops it once more.
A reminder.
“You see me.” He takes a lock of my hair and twists it in his fingers. “And now you’ve finally let me see you, pretty bird.”
I pull him in for a kiss, and Enzo obliges, letting me devour him. When I eventually pull away, breathless, a glint catches my eye.
Enzo has a blade in his hand.
“May I?” he asks, still holding the same lock of hair.
I nod, and with a quick swipe, Enzo now has a sizable length of my hair.
“You’re such an oddball,” Bastian says.
Instead of responding, Enzo sends the knife back, and when it’s gone, something small and silver glints in his palm.
A thick rectangular pendant dangles from a silver chain.
Not a pendant. A locket. He opens it and places the hair he just cut from my head into it, snaps it closed, and clasps it around his neck.
I can’t help but laugh. “Because my name carved into your stomach wasn’t enough?”
“You didn’t,” Bastian asks, incensed.
“I like it,” I say and show him the silvery E on my stomach.
“You know...” Axe says from the doorway, startling me. He’s leaning against the frame. There’s something strange in his gaze. “I didn’t believe it. The myth that one day the highest leaders of Cinder will be united by one woman.”
He’s wound tight, the tension in his face and his stiff posture tells me so.
