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We didn’t have time to debate what may or may not happen. I clamped my hands onto the crown. Sharp barbs of pain shot through my palms and up my arm. I hissed but dared not let go. The damn thing was coming off my brother’s head if I had to sever it from his neck myself.
“Lark?”
“It’s fine.” Blood dripped onto Razak’s face—my blood. He twitched under each new drop, stirring back to wakefulness.
“Hurry.”
Draven placed a boot on Razak’s chest and brandished the short sword he’d stabbed Razak in the back with. “I have him. When he wakes up, my handsome face will be the first thing he sees.”
The crown’s cool metal burrowed into my skin and its barbs retreated from my brother’s skull, turning instead on me. What if the damned thing wouldn’t let go?
I tugged, and it tore free of Razak’s scalp, taking scabbed hair and skin with it. Now I had it in my grasp, where I supposed it belonged. The resonating hum filled my head and trembled through my bones. What if I wore it? What if that was why I was here? Would the power of the crowns then be mine?
“Lark?” Arin stepped in front of me. “Lark… We need to put the crowns together, remember? You said they have to be close for this to work—whatever it is.”
Razak’s dark, liquid chuckle bounced off the tiled walls. “He wants it, the power. He likes it. Always has. I took it from him, did you know, Arin? He had it, briefly, and I took it. But he’s tasted it. It was his. I knew, I’ve always known. He is Pain’s prince, and now he has its crown. Go on, brother, wear it. Own it. Let it take you. You’ve always wanted to—”
Draven’s right hook slammed Razak back to the floor. “One more word and Arin will cut out your tongue.”
Razak glared one-eyed at Draven. “He’s too weak.”
Arin shot my brother a look that made it clear he was not the same prince Razak had stabbed in Love’s court many moons ago.
“Lark, wear it, if you like,” Arin said, turning back to me. “But the pursuit of this power destroyed your father, and your brother. Your mother wouldn’t want this. Danyal wouldn’t want this.”
“What about you?” I asked, my voice echoing, untethered inside my own mind. “What do you want?”
His soft smile was a ray of sunlight through black clouds. “You,” he said. “Just you, therealyou, not a prince. I want the you in there—” He placed his hand on my chest. “—in your heart.”
His touch hauled me back from the crown’s allure. “Of course, no… I don’t want the crown. I never have.” I shot Razak a snarl. “I’m not you!”
He snorted. “You’re too pathetic a creature to take up your birthright.”
I turned toward the pool in the middle of the room. The crowns had to go together; they had to touch. I knew this much from the warnings on the walls. Put them alongside each other, and we had a key—either to the end of all this, or something worse. There was only one way of knowing.
I climbed the pool’s steps, then stepped down into its empty basin and crouched. I tried to set the crown down, but its barbs had hooked into my skin. Panic fluttered my heart. “Arin, it’s stuck.”
Arin dashed to my side and attempted to pry it off too, but the barbs sliced his fingers.
Razak’s laugh echoed. “You’re wasting time. Draven’s son has precious moments to live.”
“What did you say?” I heard Draven strike Razak but was too focused on my own situation to care. “If you’ve touched my son, I swear I will take you apart piece by piece,” Draven warned.
Arin teased the crown’s barbs from my skin, but as the blood smeared over both our hands, it became harder and harder to see if we’d made any progress. “Gods, your hands… Is this working?” he asked.
“It’s letting go. I think.”
“Where you both stand, Zayan killed a man,” Razak announced. “Seduced him with lies, then cut his wrists open and watched him bleed out. Of course, he pumped him to climax first. He does like to kill them as they come.”
I glanced up. Arin’s frown shadowed his face. He pulled at my fingers, prying them off the crown, one by one, but didn’t look up at me.
“He’s killed countless, and he fucked them as they died,” Razak continued. “Is that the butcher you wish to spend the rest of your days with, Love’s Prince?”
“Draven,” Arin growled. “Shut him up.”
“He’ll forever be broken,” Razak went on. “I broke him. He’ll never be yours. He’s mine, he’ll always be mine! I’m in his head,forever.”
Draven’s punch silenced him. Razak knew he was on borrowed time; he’d say and do anything to save himself and hurt me. The problem was, it was all true.
