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“You’re w-wrong,” she snapped, dropping her hand from my chest altogether. I felt like she’d slapped me. “Yes, people are c-cruel, but if I did nothing, then I’d be just as b-bad as them.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t stand being in this pool, trapped with her in my arms. I couldn’t handle how she stared at me. I shattered the moment in the only way I knew how.
“Don’t disobey me again, Frey. Your only words should be ‘Yes, sir,’ when I give you an order.”
Kiara flinched again. Even in her feverish state, she bristled at the command.
Why did her defiance cause my blood to boil, and not in a way that often led to death? No, this time it simmered beneath my skin, a delicious heat settling into my chest.
Ineededher to get angry, to fight and show me thatlifein her eyes. Even if her anger was directed at me.
It was how she’d stay alive.
Kiara growled as she shoved against my chest. I forced myself to drop my arms and step back before fixing my face into a mask of apathy.
She swayed on her feet, but a rosy blush had finally colored her wan cheeks.
“You may be the commander,” she said, “but you’re a fool t-to think I’d let someone die if I could s-save them, order or not. Y-you don’t know me at all.”
She gave me her back, dismissing me.
My teeth ground together as my temper flared, and I curled my hands into fists.
Minutes passed, but she refused to turn, to give me the satisfaction of her gaze. So I stayed, fixed in place, my eyes eating holes in the walls. My anger didn’t dissipate.
Why couldn’t she understand that she’d almost died?
Images of a field of white haze filled my thoughts, of lifeless eyes and broken bodies. My brothers…all dead, all lost, because they’d dared to hope they might make a difference.
“You’re a foolish child who knows nothing of the world,” I snarled, breaking the eerie quiet that had befallen. “And you will die because of it.”
I wanted to take back the words the second they stained the stifling air dividing us. They tasted acrid and vile on my tongue. Her shoulders stiffened. She didn’t face me, but she did reply, her tone colder than the frozen mountains in the north.
“And you are an unfeeling, miserable bastard. And when you die, it will be alone.”
I might as well have been punched in the gut.
How many times had people told me I was a prick? A cold-hearted shell of a man, only good at bloodying his hands for a corrupt king? I’ve been called every name in the book for the past five years, ever since I officially joined the Knights, and yet…
Why did it sting more when the jab came from her? I didn’t know her, I shouldn’t care.
Ripples of water rocked against my shoulders as I moved toward the steps and climbed out of the pool. I didn’t pause before opening the double doors and slamming them shut behind me.
Something foreign twisted my gut, but I ignored it.
If I didn’t get myself in check, Iwoulddie alone, as she’d so vehemently put it. But my death would occur out there in the cursed dark, where the Mist would swallow me up whole. Another soldier who dared to fight against the impossible.
Chapter Fifteen
Kiara
The commander is hesitant when it comes to the girl. I fear his attachment might become a problem.
Letter from Lieutenant Harlow to King Cirian,
year 50 of the curse
“Ki. You there?” Patrick was waving his hand in front of my face, his dark brows furrowed. He’d apologized multiple times for being short with me yesterday, and I was quick to forgive.
