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I bolted toward him, to catch him, hold him. He’d be all right, if I could just—
“Lark,” Razak snapped, his words yanking me to a halt.
Flames boiled up the walls behind him, too vast and fierce to stop.
Razak straightened his clothes, picked up the crown again, and smoothed his hair. “So much preparation, so many years, and it all fell within moments. It is done.”
Done?
Arin braced on an arm, breathing hard. All around, his people screamed, desperate to escape the heat and thick smoke. Lords and ladies I’d frolicked with. I knew their mistakes and their regrets, but I knew their hopes and dreams too. Some were vicious, but many were just… people. They did not deserve this, yet I’d known it would happen. I’d always known.
This was my fault.
Razak snatched a fistful of my hair, spun me around. “Look!” He laughed. “Look how they dance.”
Fire dripped from above, setting their colorful clothes alight. Some lay still, thoroughly ablaze. Others ran and clawed at the walls.
“Take a bow, Lark. This would not have been possible without your cunning.” Fire danced in the Prince of Pain’s eyes. “Treachery is in your blood. I was right to place you here.”
I fought in his grip. I had to get to Arin; if I could somehow get him out, then it wasn’t over, it wasn’t done. Razak laughed and dragged me toward smoldering drapes. He yanked them aside, flung open a pair of terrace doors, and pulled me into the cool night air. Behind us, the drapes fell back, hiding the doors again and the terrified people.
Arin… I had to go back. The people could be saved if they knew about the doors.
A great rumbling groaned from inside the feasting hall and the vivid screams faded behind a howl of fire. “The doors, tell them—”
“Tell me, Lark,” Razak said, cutting me off. He eyed the quiet moon suspended above the Court of Love’s endless flower meadows. “How easy was it to make him love you?”
I struggled, buckled under his grip, but there was no escaping him. There never had been. No longer fighting, I slumped on my feet, and Razak freed my hair. “Four years,” I said, sounding cold again, sounding like the stranger in my mirror, the man I’d left behind to come to the Court of Love.
I thought of Arin trying to juggle balls in the library, Arin bathed in moonlight on his secret beach, of his promise to keep me safe in his court, his passion to save his people. His tender touch had reached into parts of me nobody else had exposed. He’d lied about what he’d wanted me for, of course. He’d always planned to kill me. And now he was dead too. Dead like the heart in my chest.
Guilt twisted my insides in knots, trying to choke me. I breathed in and wrestled the horror and regret back into the far corners of my mind.
Razak descended the terrace steps to a group of his own men waiting by a black carriage. “Burn it all,” he ordered.
He climbed into the carriage, settled into the seat, and placed Albus’s crown beside him.
I sat opposite, present in the moment but strangely detached from it too, as though moving through someone else’s dream. The carriage door closed, sealing me inside a thick, pregnant silence with just the muffled sound of roaring flames and breaking glass.
Razak stared out of the tinted window at the meadow’s swaying flowers, lit by dancing firelight. “By morning, there will be nothing left of Love.”
No, I thought, and let my gaze settle on the blood-splattered crown.Just its jagged pieces in my heart.
CHAPTER16
Lark
Rain streaked the windowpane,melting the view of the towers outside, although there was little to see in the darkness anyway. Always grey, always raining. Gone were the brilliant flower meadows and ocean views. The Court of Love’s sweet pollen could not reach me here, in one of many towering buildings the Court of Pain called home. The smell of smoke haunted me, wafting from the same clothes I’d worn for days. I’d slept once, and dreamed of playing the fiddle while the world and all its people had burned. Ellyn had been there, Danyal too, his face marked with dozens of scars.
Ellyn was likely dead, caught in the fire.
I hadn’t slept since.
Four years I’d been gone from Pain’s court. Two days I’d been back, if my grumbling stomach was any indication, and already Lark’s brilliant life had begun to fade like a dream on waking.
I wasn’t Lark anymore.
He didn’t exist. I’d burned him down too, left him in Love’s ashes.
