Chapter 74 #2
The king’s expression grew darker, the energy of him as cold and as hard as iron. “If it comes to it, I’ll do what I must. I refuse to let the demon control me. I won’t be turned against my brother, against my people…or against you.”
“Valen—”
He pulled away from me. “I need time to think. Alone. Leave me, both of you.”
The king turned his back on us and stalked into the other room, leaving me adrift in my misery. He needed space. And so did I.
Two months ago, I’d visualized a hundred ways I would kill him. Now, I couldn’t imagine a single one to save him. A bottomless pit opened inside me, consuming the euphoria I’d felt moments ago. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak.
Two weeks. That’s all he had. All I had. All we had.
“We need to talk, you and I,” Locke said.
I glared back at him. “I think we’ve talked enough.”
I shoved past him and out the door. I had to clear my head. I had to be somewhere else, anywhere else.
The halls thrummed with a deep resounding misery that echoed my own, so strong I didn’t know where my own emotions began and those trapped in the castle ended. I fled down the corridor, the whispers haunting every footstep I took.
Time is running out.
I ran down the stairs and shoved my way out into the courtyard. Bright sunlight rolled over me, and I tilted my head back, absorbing the warmth, praying it would drive the whispers away. Yet the rage shuddering from the castle only grew worse.
The petrified soldier standing guard in the garden looked back at me with empty eyes. The curse is growing stronger. He is growing stronger.
Footsteps scuffed the gravel behind me.
I turned. Locke.
“Why are you following me?” I bit out.
“This is your fault, you know,” he said as he approached. “You’d better pray you can find a way to save him.” His face was cold and steady—the opposite of mine—and yet there was no mistaking the accusation in his words and tone.
“My fault? I didn’t ask for any of this: to be imprisoned here, to hire mercenaries, to be assaulted in the library. None of it.”
“You may not have asked for it, but you’re responsible for everything.”
He couldn’t have shocked me more if he’d just struck me across the jaw. I stood there, speechless in my outrage.
Locke circled me. “I’ve watched over the king for decades. Before you arrived, his scales remained red. He shifted once every few months. Yet since he’s laid eyes on you, his emotions have been out of control, and every shift, the scales have been consumed by black.”
“That’s not my fault.”
He strode toward me and lifted my chin so he could look straight into my soul. “The king thinks Sarkis was a tool sent by the demon to break him. It seems to me that you’re even better suited to the job.”
I slapped his hand away. “You really think I’m working for the demon? I brought myself here. And after learning the truth, I’ve only tried to help.”
“Tried and failed.” His gaze sliced through me, searching for deceit with the precision of a surgeon. “And to think, you were meant to break the curse. But you haven’t, and I doubt you ever will.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. I was supposed to break the curse? Had I heard that right?
Locke shook his head, then turned his back on me and began walking to the door.
“What are you talking about?” I rushed after him, but he didn’t stop. I flicked up my hand. The prickles of magic flowed over my skin, and the door slammed shut before he stepped through. “What do you mean I’m supposed to break the curse?”
He slowly turned around, something unreadable in his eyes. “The prophecy. You’re supposed to break the curse, but as far as I can tell, you’ve only served to put our king in more danger.”
Confusion churned above the raging emotions inside me. “What prophecy?”
Locke inclined his head. “The king didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
He cursed and slowly shook his head. “And here, I’d thought he’d started to trust you. Perhaps you should ask him.”
Every word was a knife slicing deeper. He’d always been cold, but this was something different. Something personal.
“Tell me,” I gritted through clenched teeth. “Tell me exactly what you’re talking about before I lose my mind.”
“It’s not for me to share.”
My fists knotted, and a marble planter beside me began to shake under the waves of energy slipping off me. “Don’t make me squeeze it out of you. I need to know what’s going on. Now.”
His eyes narrowed with an unmistakable glint of surprise that made my skin prickle. “Your strength is growing.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I snapped, shooting him a look I used on Ella many times. “Tell me about the prophecy.”
He scanned the courtyard and windows above, then took me by the arm and pulled me into the shadows of an alcove. “The king received a prophecy that you have the power to save him. That you are the only one who can break the curse.”
The words thundered against the hollow in my chest, a battering ram. I stared, unable to find the words, except for one. “Me?”
“You,” he replied.
I searched his face for the lie, the cruel jest, but his features were hard, with an earnestness I’d never seen from him before.
Oh gods, if it was true…if I’d been grasping in the dark…
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I whispered, barely holding the strength to make the sound.
“The only reason I’m telling you now is because the king’s time is almost up. If there’s something you know, something that you can do to save him, you’d better figure it out.”
I had to figure it out. Me.
And I was already out of time. The enormity of it slammed down, a portcullis cutting off everything that had come before from the burden I now carried—alone.
A sob that I refused to release lodged in my throat. “Why would he hide this from me?”
“You’ll have to ask him that yourself, but I doubt you’ll like the answer.”
He didn’t trust me. He didn’t think I could change things.
Locke turned away, but I grasped his arm. I needed more, and suddenly, he was the only lifeline I had to the truth. “Where did this prophecy come from?”
He studied me a long while, letting me hang on tenterhooks. Finally, he shrugged. “From an old one-eyed woman who seems touched by the Fates.”
It was a sword blade plunged through my heart and twisted.
He was talking about Siggy. The woman who’d taught me everything I knew about the forest. She’d known about my magic, and yet she’d never told me.
Just like Valen.