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“I’m well aware.” And I was—the iron collar wrapped around my throat served as a permanent reminder that I was a prisoner here, that I had been cut off from my Curse.
Kaleb’s gaze leveled with mine. “You know that the king is lurking somewhere outside this room right now, and he would probably like nothing more than to torch your Cursed, immortal ass, right?” A hint of a smile touched the corners of his lips.
I grinned. “Not if I torch his old, mortal ass first.”
Kaleb chuckled at that. We both did. And damn it felt good.
He glanced towards the balcony doors and his smile faded. “I hate the thought of leaving you here.”
“I’ll be fine,” I reassured him before I tacked on playfully, “Immortal, remember?”
He gave me a half smile, but his eyes were dimly lit. “Just because you are immortal, that doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” I looked down at my hands.
His words served as a stark reminder of everything I had gone through. Especially these past few months. I had experienced what so many of the Cursed had gone through—the destruction of my family.
Sure, Arkyn and Soren had played their parts, but there was one person I placed the blame with more than anyone else—
The king.
Something ugly swelled inside of me, a potent mixture of hatred and disgust, and it seeped into my veins. It was the exact same feeling I had felt on the day Adelina died.
The king’s laws and his complete disregard for human life had led to so many pointless deaths. He could rule differently than his forefathers had—he could choose peace instead of war. But no, he followed in his father’s footsteps, and his grandfather’s before him, and so forth. And this was the result of it. Because of one family’s bias, they’d destroyedthousandsof lives.
How many more would have to die? When would the raping and pillaging and complete disregard for human life end?
I knew the answer—over the past few weeks, while the castle slept, it was all I could think about, and like a brush fire on a windy day, it consumed me.
A deep sigh fell from Kaleb’s mouth, pulling me from my thoughts. “Thereisanother reason you want to stay, isn’t there?”
I could lie to him—it would make what I planned to do a lot easier, as I imagined he would try to talk me out of it. But maybe I needed to say it out loud. Maybe I needed to voice it, to hear it, to pledge it.
I decided to tell him the truth. “There is.”
“What is it?” he asked, scrubbing at his temples as if he sensed a headache coming on.
“I’m finally in a position where I can do something to end the suffering,” I said. I took a breath, the words that had echoedinside my mind these past few weeks assembled on my tongue. My heartbeat rang in my ears like a bell, growing louder and louder with each strike—urging me on, urging me to say those six powerful words.
And then I did.
“I’m going to kill the king.”
Sage
Kaleb just sat there, staring at me—gawkingat me, like he was seeing me for the first time. And when I was certain his eyes were about to fall out of his head, he seemed to snap out of it, and he opened his mouth. I waited on bated breath, mentally preparing for the tongue-lashing coming my way. But before his tongue could form a single word, his mouth sprung closed like a bear trap snapped shut.
He rose from the bed. This time, it was his turn to pace—his feet carrying him back and forth. Back and forth. And back and forth.
Finally, I said, “You are going to wear a hole in the floor. Just spit it out.”
Kaleb ran his fingers through his hair as his gray-blue eyes lifted to mine. He let out a withheld breath. “When I was a boy, I used to ask Ezra why she trained you so much, why she had no interest in training me . . . One day she finally told me.” He shook his head in astonishment. “Sage, she told me that one day, you were going to kill the king.”
Now, it was my turn to be speechless.
Despite her hokey-pokey nature, Ezra knew things, things that most people did not. To hear that she had told Kaleb that . . . it felt like reassurance, confirming that this was the path I was destined to take.
He spoke softly. “You do this on one condition, Sage.” He held up a single finger, furthering his point. “You let me help you.”
