Chapter 30
Thirty
To prove herself (or himself) worthy of the throne, a princess (or prince) must challenge those in line to a fight in a fairy ring.
The Court can never know how I killed Aurelia. - King Richard
I toss the blade at Jace’s feet, challenging him to a fight in my private gym. He bends down to pick it up in acceptance, and when he rises with a sneer on his lips, I smile cruelly. “You look a bit pissed there, Jace.”
He rotates his wrist, twirling the weapon.
“I wonder why that might be?” He chuckles sharply, his laughter a chill across my spine.
This is what I’ve wanted, though, from the moment my own wife accused me of being a monster.
It’s a term that has been spat at me multiple times before – too many times to count, but this time… coming from her…
I shift onto the balls of my feet, needing this fight.
“Could it be because you flew off without a guard?” Jace asks, his eyes narrowed in annoyance.
I straighten, not even caring that I’m leaving myself open to attack. “Oh, come on,” I say dryly. “Saragese and Irin were on me the entire time.”
He taps the tip of the blade to his chin. “Oh, yeah, they were.” He points the knife at me. His smile curves his face in two. “It’s because you ate my fucking cake.”
As soon as I got back, I went to Jace’s private rooms and helped myself to his fridge.
Then I broke the magic runes keeping it cold so he would know as soon as he went inside that something was wrong.
It took him two seconds to find me in my gym.
He always holds back on me when we spar, but he won’t now. And I need that.
Arienna is driving me crazy.
Holding his gaze, I lick the icing I left on my lips just to piss him off. I barely manage to taste the gosberry-and-honey blend before I’m lunging back, attempting to stay out of his reach. Diving, he rolls into a crouch in front of me. His leg kicks out in an arch, sweeping me off the ground.
My wings snap out as I fall. They flap strongly, pushing me up but not fast enough to escape the sharp slice across my thigh. It’s a shallow cut. Non-lethal. He’s playing with me, considering he could’ve aimed for my spine.
Scowling, I twist in the air and drop back on top of him. My legs wrap around his neck. His arm comes up to stab me, but I know he won’t hit anything major. The bastard never loses control even when pissed.
Plus, considering I’ve challenged Karl to a fight in a fairy ring, I might as well make it fair for him by taking a fair bit of damage beforehand. I wouldn’t want to be accused of being a monster.
Ignoring the agony that erupts in my leg from the slice of Jace’s blade, I slam my elbow onto his head. Over and over and over again in rapid succession.
He tosses the knife away, knowing I’m not tapping out.
Lurching backwards, he tries to slam us into the ground, but I flap my wings hard, keeping us both upright.
He stumbles around below me for a few steps before finding his balance.
Jumping high, his own wings spreading, he curls up at the waist and kicks me in the skull. Hard.
My head snaps sideways. I hear something crack. As blood oozes into my eyes, we hit the ground. He wrestles on top of me, swings a fist down to break my nose. Throwing my arms in front of my face, I block him. Pain shoots through my forearms. Then through my exposed side as the bastard bites me.
An honourable fighter Jace is not.
Then again, neither am I.
Rolling us over, I slam a knee into his balls.
He moans but not in a painful way. His strong hands run up my legs.
“I told you you’re not allowed to do that!” I snap.
Another groan escapes his lips. “Do it again, Daddy.”
Shuddering, I push away from him and jump to my feet. “This is why we never spar anymore.”
He laughs as he stands. “No, it’s because you’re always such a tease, yet never finish me off.”
My eyes narrow. I glance at the dagger on the floor; it’s not too far from me.
“Go for it,” he murmurs before kissing the air.
Shaking my head, I walk to the edge of the mat. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”
“You know what’s wrong with me.”
I stop, a chill of regret and pain shooting through me.
We have never talked about that night. Rarely talk about her, yet this is the second time he’s brought her up in as many days.
I’m torn between being elated for him and hating him.
The memories of her rip me apart, but I’m glad he’s starting to face what he did…
what I asked him to do. Perhaps, he’ll even start to heal.
Turning to him, I hold his gaze. “I’m sorry I asked that of you.”
His smile shines with pain. “No, you’re not. You did what you did because you loved her.”
“So did you,” I murmur, acknowledging that truth for the first time.
Pure agony flickers across his face, breaking the smile that he wears like a marble mask. “Yeah.”
Walking forward, he picks up the blade. He flicks it into the air and catches it again. After the second toss, he throws it at my feet in a challenge.
I hold his gaze, searching for any trace of the controlled man he’s turned into. But there is nothing but a heartbroken boy looking back at me. A dangerous, heartbroken boy who has every right to hate me.
My nerves pull tight.
Adrenaline bursts through my veins. But if I’m to die, let it be by his hand. No one deserves to kill me more.
My heart hammering, I pick up the knife.
He is on me in an instant, his fists swinging, his feet kicking, his elbows knocking into my ribs and face and gut. I take each one of his blows to heart, hearing her angelic voice in every thump of his fist.
“I have so many dreams for this place.”
His elbow snaps my face to the side. A tooth goes flying. Blood pours down my chin, staining me with the sins of my past. I try my best to block what I can, but Jace isn’t holding back this time, and the skill between us is vast.
I’m not trying to block him to stop the pain though. I just know he needs me to fight back, to let him hurt me without mercy. To force me to pay one of those lifetimes I owe him.
“I’ll turn the battlements into universities,” Aurelia says, “the arenas into stadiums for dances and plays and games.”
Swiping the blade between us, I open Jace’s side – a shallow cut. He grunts, twists, and kicks me straight in the chest. I fly across the room, then land hard on my wings.
Hissing, I scramble to my feet – and directly into Jace’s fist.
“Our soldiers will come home, and our borders will be open. We can’t go to war with them if they’re our friends, right?”
Her smile haunts me as I stumble around, shaking my head, trying to focus on the man attacking me. My best friend. My greatest ally.
I raise an arm to block a blow to my side – and I take one to the underside of my chin.
“We’ll be at peace. Can you imagine that, Dickie? Us at peace.”
As she twirls in my memories, laughing with pure joy, I hit the padded ground. The world darkens, narrowing into pinpoints of fading consciousness – helped by Jace’s fists to my face as he straddles me.
When I wake, Jace is crouched beside me, his head in his hands, tears sliding down his face. “I loved her.”
Blinking sluggishly, I sit up. His face is bruised from the blows I managed to land. One eye swollen. His lip cut. But I know I look worse. I sure as hel feel worse.
“I know,” I say, spitting out blood.
He looks over at me, his eyes raw and full of torment. “Then why do it? Out of everything you could have asked, why that?”
I reach for his shoulder, gripping it hard like I should’ve done years ago. “Because she loved you.”
He flinches, reacting more to those words than he did to the knife in his side. “What?”
“It wasn’t just an infatuation Au–” I clear my throat, her name too hard to say. “My sister loved you, Jace. She talked about asking you to marry her one day.”
He jumps to his feet and starts to pace. He runs his hands through his hair, tugging on the ends. His fingers flex at his sides, needing something to hit, to strangle, to kill. The energy pouring off him is dark and dangerous.
Stilling, I don’t dare move. “She talked about the large family you would have – once you finally noticed her.”
“Notice her?” He spins on me, his voice as raw and as broken as they were that day. “I noticed everything about her! You were the one that told me to stay away…”
I hold his gaze, seeing my own pain and guilt reflected in his teal eyes. Out of all the things I’ve done in my life, all the monstrous things Arienna has probably heard of, what I asked Jace to do that day… what I did the evening after… that was the worst.
“Until I didn’t,” I say, finishing his thought.
Tears glisten in his eyes. They fall down his cheeks and hit the wooden floor with thunderous splats in the silence pulled taut between us.
“Will you do this for me, Jace? For her?”
His muscles completely relax. The air thickens with fury. Despite myself, my fingers graze the hilt of my dagger in fear.
“Why did you tell me?” he asks, his voice dangerously low.
“Because I want her to enjoy this holiday.” The last one she will ever get.
His eyes burn bright with fury. “You could’ve just asked me to have sex with her.
You could’ve sent me there as a duty to a princess, and I would’ve said yes.
” He takes a step towards me. My fingers tighten on my blade.
Grabbing my tunic, he yanks me close. “So why did you just tell me she likes me? Why!”
My heart pounds, but I keep his gaze without flinching. I’ll do anything for her. She’s my greatest joy in life and deserves all the happiness this fucked-up world can give her. “So you’ll cherish her.”
His mouth drops open as if he can’t understand the words I uttered. Shoving me away from him, he storms off. “I would have anyway.”
“I could have had years with her,” Jace accuses as he grabs the knife off the blood-splattered floor, his eyes wild, his breathing strained. “And instead, because of you, I only had one night.”
My gaze locks on to the blade that’s swinging agitatedly in his hand.
But it’s not my life I’m worried about. When Aurelia died, he disappeared for a long time.
I don’t know if he became suicidal, but I’ve seen the pain he’s carried since.
I never knew how much he cared for her. I never – He was her bodyguard.
A commoner. But I should’ve seen the signs.
“I’m so–”
The blade flies through the air, landing right between my legs. It pierces through the leather of my trousers, and the pain shooting up my balls catches me off guard. I glance down, terrified of seeing what I’m about to see but knowing I deserve nothing less.
But it’s just a knick. I wiggle back, breathe shakily when my trousers tear but my ball sack doesn’t. By the time I look up again though, Jace is gone, and the door to my private gym is slamming shut.
For the first time in nearly two decades, I’m truly on my own. His absence bothers me a lot more than I thought it would given all the times I’ve tried to shake him.
Slowly, I climb to my feet. There is a healing wand in the cabinet on my right, but I ignore it on my way to the punching bag. Throwing fist after fist into its cloth, I beat my knuckles raw.
“I want you to be king, Dickie.”
I slam my hand into the bag. Thump.
“I can’t be the ruler our people need me to be.”
Thump. Thump.
“But you have to promise me, when Raza’s ready for peace, you’ll push for it.”
Twisting my hips, I throw all my energy into each blow. Pain erupts everywhere, but I keep going.
I keep going until the sweet voice of my baby sister is drowned out by the high pitch of Arienna’s.
“You’re a monster.”
Thump. Thump.
“He was my fiance…”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Will you show him mercy?”
Thump!
“Not a monster like you.”
Thump! Thump! Crack!