Chapter 75
Belle
Locke left me reeling in the garden, more alone than I’d ever been. Yet in his absence, the storm within me began to calm, the waves exhausting themselves and settling into something I could swim against.
Even the deep vibrations of anger I’d felt emanating from the castle began to fade. Were those emotions real, or simply a reflection of my own?
The petrified soldier stared blankly back at me without answer, but now, rather than a sense of warning, his vacant look held something else: expectation.
It was all on me now. Apparently, it always had been—I just hadn’t known it.
And maybe it was too late.
The thought gutted me. I looked down at my hands, wondering what I could even do. Was it any surprise the king hadn’t bothered to tell me?
Save him anyway. Save Ella, save the Bloodvale.
That was the only path forward. The enormity of the task didn’t matter, or the lies, or the time running through the glass.
I turned and left the garden behind.
The guards outside the king’s chambers didn’t stop me when I approached, yet I hesitated at the door, steeling myself for what was to come. I didn’t need another fight, but I needed the truth, and I was going to get it one way or another.
“Let me in.” My palms tingled, and the door unlocked, swinging wide.
The king rose from his spot by the window. “I’m in no mood to talk, princess. I told you, I want to be alone.”
I shut the door behind me and locked it with my magic. “I’m afraid that doesn’t matter. I need you to tell me about the prophecy.”
His shoulders stiffened, and his eyes, now a warm hazel, dilated—but his lying lips recovered quickly. “What are you ta—”
“Don’t.” I walked forward and met his eyes. “Locke told me about it, so don’t insult me with a lie. I just want the truth—for once.”
Valen stood there, a mountain radiating strength and power I would never have. His expression was steel, and his command over the room unquestioned—and yet, he looked cornered. Guilty, though nothing showed on his face.
“What exactly did Locke tell you?”
I crossed my arms, wrapping them around me as if they were a shield for what was coming next. “He said that I have the power to break the curse, and apparently, I’m the only one who can save you.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, and some of the tension loosened from his shoulders. “Then you know.”
The words fell like stones. I released an unsteady breath, and it felt ten degrees colder in the room, even with Valen’s eternal heat.
A part of me had hoped that Locke had been playing some sort of sick mind game to torture me. Instead, the man I was falling for had decided to keep the most important part of my magic a secret.
“Was the prophecy why you wanted Locke to train me? Why you were so certain that I had magic?”
He leaned back against his desk. “Yes.”
Hours ago, he’d told me I was his. But he’d never trusted me enough to tell me why.
I nodded, wishing I could bottle up the hurt that twisted through my chest. “Then he knew from the beginning, too?”
“No. I only told him later—when I couldn’t avoid it.”
My nails dug into the skin along my arms, the pain helping me keep it together. “And it never occurred to you to tell me, the person who the prophecy is about? Why? Because you didn’t trust me?”
“Of course I didn’t,” he snarled, pushing off the desk, a little of the king fading away, revealing the beast lurking beneath the surface. “When we first met, I thought you were a spy or an assassin sent by my brother.”
“And after you knew I wasn’t? After I’d seen you transform? After you’d told me about your curse? Why not then?”
My eyes stung as he fell into silence, but I wouldn’t accept silence as an answer. I didn’t let my glare waver until he tore himself away from my gaze and withdrew to the shadows at the far side of the room.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said finally.
“Try.”
He flexed his hand, as if grasping for an invisible weapon, then sighed. “I was tired of being powerless. I wanted to control my own fate.”
I wanted to pull my hair, to hurl myself at him. To hammer my fists against his chest. “Powerless? You know nothing about being powerless. You’re immortal. A king. You can turn into a Fates-damned dragon.”
Valen turned on me, gold flashing in his eyes. “The dragon takes over when it wants, and I can barely control it. I was barred from my homeland for half a century and trapped by a curse that I cannot break.”
He paced the length of the room like a man with nowhere to go. My heart ached for him, but it didn’t excuse him. Like every man in my life, Valen had underestimated me. Dismissed me like a second thought.
Bracing himself against the carved embrasure of the window, his gaze stretched far to the horizon.
“When I wanted to free the Bloodvale of the mages, Siggy told me that I couldn’t—and she was right.
I failed. I was banished, and my freedom was stolen from me.
So when she told me that I couldn’t free myself from my own curse, that it could only be you, I was enraged beyond anything in my life. I wanted the power to save myself.”
“So you’d rather die a captive than let someone else save you?” I asked, unable to keep the accusation from my voice. “Maybe you could have saved yourself by trusting me.”
He turned on me, the movement violent and sinuous, and for a second, I was facing the dragon, and not the man.
“What was I supposed to say? That your fate was tied to mine?” he asked, his eyes now a fiery gold. “Would you have tried any harder? Done anything different?”
My jaw was set, but the walls I’d erected in the garden came crashing down. “Maybe, maybe not, but I would’ve known, Valen.”
I headed toward the door but paused when my fingers touched the handle.
“I spent my entire life grasping for a purpose—thinking that I was just a faint shadow of my sister. Turns out, I had a purpose, but you never told me. Siggy never told me. And now that I know, it might be too late to do anything about it.”
He took a single step forward, as if pulled by an invisible lead. “I didn’t want to burden you.”
“Burden me with what?” My voice cracked. “The knowledge that I had power? That I had a chance to do something important with my life?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Because, Belle, I didn’t want you to blame yourself if you failed.”
Pity was etched across his face, but the crushing truth was all too clear: he thought I would fail.
It was another knife to the gut. I should have stopped feeling them by now, but it was still just as sharp.
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe I would’ve blamed myself, but at least I could’ve convinced myself that you believed in me. That someone did.” I pulled open the door and stepped past the guards.
“Where are you going?” He called after.
I didn’t bother to look back as I strode past the sentries. “To find a way to save you before it’s too late for us all.”