Chapter 32
Elara
Something clamps around my wrist.
I jolt awake with a scream, jerking so hard my elbow cracks the underside of the table. Pain flashes bright as I scramble backward, knees scraping over the floorboards, pressing my spine into the corner of the wall.
The hand grips my wrist tighter. “Don’t!”
Not bone and wind.
Human. Hoarse. Frantic.
My eyes drag open. I blink, my chest heaving, my vision swimming in the gray, watery light of dawn. Did I fall to sleep?
“Did Death tell you that the bloodline is already compromised?” Kael crouches on the floor, peering under the table, his hair tangled around the crown and his face drained of all color. “Last night by the greenhouse. Is that something you told me? That the curse once went to the wrong person?”
The terror of that memory clashes over me like a wave. “What?”
I stare at him, my heart hammering loud enough to drown out the morning birdsong, the cold air biting where my skin is bare. Bare. Everywhere.
My breath catches. I’m naked, my dress left somewhere in the wreck of my chamber. I instinctively curl tighter, thighs clenching, free arm crossing my breasts as if my hands can hide what the table’s shadow cannot.
“Elara!” Kael shouts, glancing over his shoulder at the door for a second before his blue gaze finds mine again. “What did Death tell you?!”
I flinch so hard my shoulder scrapes the wall, breath fluttering out of me in a thin, panicked gasp. “Don’t come closer!”
Kael freezes.
He drops my wrist and holds both hands up, palms open, fingers splayed. “I’m sorry.” Then, just as quickly, his eyes jerk away from the rest of me, as if decency can be restored by not looking. “I didn’t mean to shout. I’m not—” A shaky breath. “On all that’s dear to me, I’m not here to hurt you.”
He inches back from the table, giving me space, lowering himself onto his shins like he’s trying to make himself smaller.
“Look at me,” he says, quieter, stealing a sideways glance at my face.
“I am ashamed of how I acted last night. I was drunk. Utterly hopeless.” His jaw tightens.
“But I need you now, and I have no time to be gentle about it, but I won’t hurt you.
” He extends a hand into the shadows beneath the table.
Palm up, trembling slightly. “Elara, if you ever saw any decency in me at all, hold on to it now. I beg you.”
I’m disoriented, in pain from who knows how many hours of sleeping curled under the table, and yet I see the quiver in his fingers. I don’t know what’s happening. But between a drunk madman and a lying monster, there’s no true choice, is there? Might as well…
I reach out and grip his hand. “What do you want?”
Kael grips me back, his fingers interlocking with mine, solid and warm as he carefully guides me out from under the table. “What did Death tell you about the curse having transferred to the wrong person?”
“Only that and no more.” I try to scramble out. “He said that—”
My legs buckle. Cramps shoot through my calves, seizing up my muscles until I pitch forward in a cry of pain.
Kael catches me.
He sweeps me up into his arms, holding me high against his chest—careful to angle his gaze away—then stands, stumbling slightly under the weight before correcting his balance. “He said what?”
He pivots and snatches the nearest blanket from the foot of the bed with one swift yank, the wool unfurling in a heavy rush. It drapes over my naked body like a shield, tucking in tight around my shoulders and hips by brisk, practiced hands.
“That…that the royal family is no longer pure,” I say. “Or intact. Something like that, I don’t remember.”
“I knew it! God, I knew it.” He spins us toward the door. “We don’t have time. We have to get to the knife before he senses that something’s amiss.”
“Knife?” I gasp, clutching the blanket as he strides through the door into the cold corridor. “Where are we going?”
“The throne room.”
I stare at him, terrified and confused. “Why? What is happening?”
He rushes through the hallway almost at a run, his boots thudding heavily on the carpet. “Did you fuck?”
I stiffen in his arms. “What?”
“Elara, this is no time for modesty or propriety or any of that nonsense.” He looks down at me, his expression intense, uncomfortably sharp, searching my face with desperate urgency. “Did you only kiss Death? Or did you lie with him?”
I open my mouth to deny it, to defend the shred of dignity I have left. But the lie dies in my throat, letting the terrible truth echo in my silence.
Kael lets out a sound very similar to his hysterical laugh last night and finishes with a scoff.
“That is…unheard of. Never, in all the histories, in all the journals of my ancestors, did Death take a lover.” He picks up speed, his strides gaining a manic, overwhelming energy. “This couldn’t be more perfect.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I figured it out,” he breathes, his shoulders tightening occasionally from the strain of carrying me. “I figured out how to break the curse. It isn’t about paying the debt, Elara. It’s about ending it at the source.”
“What does that even—”
A side door to our left flies open. A figure rushes out, skirts flying, hair pinned back in a severe bun. Miss Hampshire.
“Is it ready?” Kael demands without stopping, continuing to rush along a vast gallery. “Did you prepare everything for the rite?”
My stomach bottoms out. “Rite?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Miss Hampshire falls into step beside Kael, her face pale as parchment but set in grim, terrifying determination. “The knife is prepared. But the priest—I couldn’t find Father Thomas. His room was empty. I think…I think he—”
“We need no priest.” Kael’s words echo off the ceiling that vaults higher with each quick stride. “We must hurry. He’ll likely sense his heartstring aching in the crown the moment I grab the knife.”
“To do what?” Pure fear floods my muscles, locking them up for a fraction of a second before they snap free, legs kicking, arms scrambling, my entire body thrashing in Kael’s arms. “Put me down. Kael, put me down! What is happening? You said you would break the curse!”
“I cannot break this curse.” A shove of his shoulders, then he bursts through a set of tall double doors with a violence that cracks the wood near the hinges.
Behind it, a red runner guides his wavering steps deeper into the throne room, the echo of a million hurried steps bouncing off the high vaulted ceiling. “No king can.”
The words land like a slab of stone dropped onto my chest. My struggles cease. For a heartbeat, I’m nothing but wool and terror in his arms, the realization hitting, slicing through me like a blade.
I’m going to die in here. Now.
Kael reaches the dais—the raised platform where the throne sits—and finally sets me on my feet. “Stand right here. Don’t move. Miss Hampshire!”
She rushes past us to a small table near the throne. There, she unwraps a velvet bundle, the object inside glinting in the pale dawn light filtering through the stained glass. Hilt crusted in gold filigree, steel dark and thirsty.
Miss Hampshire’s hands shake so badly she nearly drops the knife before she presses the hilt into Kael’s hand. She looks at me once—not with pity, but with a hard, sorrowful respect.
My knees wobble as I clutch the woolen blanket to my body, the stone floor freezing against my bare soles, paralyzing me. Why, I don’t know. This is what I came for, isn’t it? Dying? To save my family? Daron.
It sounded so noble.
Almost poetic.
But now, the reality of the moment rushes through my veins in a messy, terrified panic. I didn’t even get to hug Mother. Didn’t tell Daron that I love him. They won’t know. They won’t even understand.
“Kael, please…” I step back, trembling. “I’m not ready.”
Gold-filigreed hilt in hand, Kael positions himself across from me with the knife. “Whatever happens, Elara, I cannot interfere. You can’t hesitate. You have to—”
Bang!
The double doors at the end don’t just open; they explode inward, torn from their hinges as if hit by a battering ram of invisible force. Wood splinters rain down across the stone floor.
My head jerks around.
Vale stands in the doorway.
But the illusion is thin, frantic, tearing at the seams. Skin too pale. Eyes too dark. Shadows bleed off his coat like smoke, tendrils of darkness reaching out to grip the stone floor, searching for purchase.
“Kael!” The shout isn’t a voice; it’s the sound of a heavy crypt door growling shut, vibrating into my quivering lungs. “You foolish, notoriously difficult boy.”
Frost skitters over the ground as his boot touches the floor of the throne room. The temperature plummets. Stained glass squeaks, strains, then shatters, shards clanking the ground to frame his fast strides.
“You cannot break the curse!” Vale roars, his voice doubling, tripling, trembling with the echo of the monster beneath the skin. “It is woven into the crown! It is written in my blood!”
“I know I can’t!” Kael yells back, tears churning in his eyes like an oncoming storm. “I know I can’t!”
Kael’s hand trembles as he raises the knife between us. The steel catches the light, a flash of silver. He steps in close. Too close. His arm draws back, muscles bunching under his shirt. The blade rotates in his grip, the sharp edge angling at my throat.
My breath catches in a sob. Closing my eyes, I brace for the cut.
“I cannot break the curse…” Kael’s whisper shifts the air between us to the sensation of something solid pushing into my trembling palm. “But she can.”
My eyes snap open, gaze going to the golden hilt of the knife resting in my clasp. But it’s the way Kael closes my fingers over it, forcing my grip, that sends a flood of shivers across my body.
I look up at him. “What? I don’t understand.”
“A messenger will seek you out. He’ll explain everything, Elara, but—” With his free hand, he reaches up, yanks the crown off his head, then slams it down on mine. “Cut. Now.”
“What?” I try to pull back in horror, but the weight of the crown crushes down on me, heavy as a tombstone, the cold metal pulsing against my aching scalp. “No!”
Panic seizes my lungs. I came to die.
Not to kill.
“Cut!” Kael screams, grabbing my wrist and yanking it up.
He presses the tip of the blade against his throat.
“I cannot help further! Do it, Elara! Cut!” Kael roars, his spit flying, his eyes flooded with tears, tapping the skin over his jugular, right where his pulse beats a frantic rhythm.
“Take the crown and the curse.” Tears spill over his lashes.
“Do it for me. Do it for all the mothers I lost!”
“Don’t you dare!” Vale bellows, frost racing up the steps of the dais as his strides turn to sprints. “Elara!”
“Elara…” Kael begs, his voice cracking into a sob. He stares into my eyes, the chaos clearing for a single, heartbreaking second—and all I see is a boy who witnessed too much grief. “Kill. Me.”
Time slows to a crawl. I look at the knife in my hand. I look at the desperate king with tears streaming down his face. I look at the monster lunging to stop us.
I don’t understand.
And yet, somehow…I know.
I grip the handle. I lift the blade.
Then I slash.
The sound is wet and tearing. Hot crimson sprays my face, blinding me for a second. The pressure on the knife gives way to a sickening slide. Clank.
Kael gurgles, blue eyes rolling back. His knees hit the stone dais with a crack, and he collapses sideways, heavy and twitching.
“Elara!” Vale’s shout rumbles through the ground, the walls, the very pillars holding the room.
Silence crashes into the room, louder than his scream. The frost stops inches from my feet, Kael’s blood pooling, soaking into the hem of the wool blanket.
I turn toward Vale.
He stands frozen at the base of the dais, his chest heaving, looking at Kael’s body, then up at me. “What did you do?”
One of my hands flies to the crown, to a golden point that pulses in time with my frantic heart. My hand is shaking. My throat is raw.
A surreal giggle slips past my lips. Maybe because I’m mad. Or maybe because Death won’t have the last laugh in my life.
“Crown me dead.”
This concludes Crown Me Dead. If you have a moment, please consider leaving my story a review.