Chapter 72 Rhea #2
My hand shakes around the hilt as I take aim.
Extinguish him whispers in my head, the command reverberating as if trapped.
Extinguish him. My eyes widen as I suck in a breath at the thought, and with hardly any distance or time to spare, I plunge the dagger not in the center of his chest or near his heart but higher, beneath his clavicle with the blade pointed straight back.
It will hurt, as evidenced by his blood-curdling scream—but the siren magic flooding my veins doesn’t protest the attempt.
By incapacitating him, I’ve extinguished his importance to the king.
By hurting him, I’ve extinguished the need for vengeance.
It’s a loophole, but I realize too late when I pull the dagger out and my gaze meets the king’s, that it isn’t one that is going to save Sterling.
“Clever,” he murmurs, stepping behind me as one hand rests on my hip, right above the brand, while the other clutches where I hold the dagger, forcing our fingers to interlace.
His lips brush my ear, my body stricken with fear as he whispers, “But you only succeeded in prolonging his death.” He positions us closer to Sterling, commanding one of the guards to hold the prisoner’s head up so that my eyes are forced to meet his.
When I try to jerk away, the action driven by my desperation, King Dolian forces me into submission with magic.
“Don’t fight against me, Rhea. Look into his eyes as we do what must be done.
” So I do. Together, our hands drag the dagger across Sterling’s throat, flesh splitting as his blood spurts out and coats my dress.
Though my chest heaves as if a scream is building, there is no sound.
None that tumbles from me and none that I hear in my head as something dark and twisted shifts within.
Sterling collapses to the ground, his eyes frozen open and forever burned into my memory.
I had killed before, but it was never this intimate, and it isn’t until this moment that I realize I’ve been clinging to an innocence that was only mine to claim by semantics alone. But now even that is gone.
As Sterling’s blood begins to pool around his body, King Dolian tugs me to the left, keeping his body behind me as if I am a shield before he shouts, “Bring the next one in!”
There is the sound of footsteps and creaking armor, distantly I’m aware of the doors opening and someone else entering. But it’s all as if I’m trapped in honey, every movement just a fraction too slow. My own thoughts struggling to keep up as I stare and stare at Sterling’s lifeless body.
Suddenly, a woman is in front of me, kneeling in a tattered skirt as her head hangs low.
Her blouse might have been a lighter color but is now the shade of dried blood.
I drag my gaze up to her face, her lips cracked and swollen, her eyes faring no better.
She looks from me to the king, her own attention slow to notice Sterling on the ground next to her.
But then she does, and her lips part as a harrowing scream shatters the fog over me.
All at once, the world rushes back in, sharpening the edges of my vision until my skin breaks out in goosebumps and I feel the heat of the king’s body at my back.
“Let’s try a new bargain,” the king says from behind me, grip tightening on my hip.
“This woman is guilty of consorting with the criminal who attacked you. You will drag your knife across her throat”—the woman whimpers through her tears, her gaze still locked on Sterling as she struggles to break out of the guards’ hold on her—“or you can say that you love me. That you are mine in every way that matters.” He buries his face into the side of my neck, lips sliding along the sensitive skin there.
“Vow in blood that you belong to me, and she lives.”
The woman in front of me blurs, and it isn’t until I blink that I realize it’s because of the tears pouring from my eyes.
Despite how I hear my heart pounding in my chest, I don’t feel it.
As if the organ has detached itself and is now outside my body, a stranger pounding on a former home’s door.
And that’s how I feel, how I’ve felt, for weeks now.
Like an interloper in my own life. But, whatever this version of me is now, even she does not want to do this.
But how many people would King Dolian sacrifice to gain something that is not his—that never was?
How many lives would I let him claim so that I can hold on to the one thing I desperately want to keep for myself? For Nox?
His rumble of disappointment at my reluctance is the only moment I get before he commands me to kill her.
The magic of his demand overpowers me, and while the guards hold her in place and her dark brown eyes plead with mine, I slide the sharpened end of my blade across her neck, the king’s hand aiding in the kill. Skin splits. Blood splatters.
Her body hasn’t even hit the ground when King Dolian yells, “Bring in the next one!”
“Stop!” I cry, turning to face him, my arm twisted at an uncomfortable angle as he keeps me in his grasp. My entire body vibrates as my chest heaves, air cold against my cheeks from the tears that track down them. “Please, stop!”
Behind me, Xander’s voice cuts through the incoming footsteps and the high-pitched crying of the next person the guards have brought in. “Your Majesty, surely, a ch—”
“Do not speak another word if you hope to make it out of here with your head still attached to your body,” King Dolian interrupts, his gaze bright with feral intensity before he turns it down on me, making me flinch. “Give me what I want, and all of this will end.”
The crying behind grows louder, its cadence panicked.
My eyes bounce between his as my vision fills with tears before clearing, over and over again.
His fingers flex over mine, the blood of Sterling and the woman having seeped between our hands and making the skin there sticky.
Yet I hesitate. My hands are stained with the blood of two lives, the fate of a third dependent on me, and still, I hesitate.
And the king notices. Though he is shorter than Nox, at this moment, he towers over me, a monster trapping his prey and waiting for the right moment to strike.
It comes not by his hand or with the dagger we hold jointly.
It doesn’t even come by his tongue. No, the king turns me slowly, his hand returning to the permanent reminder of his ownership over me, and forces me to see the third victim in his deranged game.
This time, screams of protest scrape up my throat.
This time, I try to fight him, but the magic keeps me from doing anything more than shaking my head.
My knees threaten to buckle, and I think I might hear Xander or perhaps one of the other guards speaking or shouting, but it’s all discordant in my ears as I stare down at not a man or a woman but a child.
A child who is kicking and screaming. Whose bruised eye is nearly swollen shut.
One who looks up at me with pleading brown eyes, his blond hair messily strewn over his forehead in stringy clumps.
“A new compromise,” King Dolian breathes near my ear, his voice soft but laced with warning. “You must give me something, Rhea, that shows your loyalty to me and this kingdom. After all, is it not yours too?”
It’s the first time he’s ever acknowledged my claim to the throne, but it doesn’t matter. Despite his words, it isn’t mine. No kingdom is, and after today, no kingdom should ever be.
“This boy’s life is in your hands, and what I want from you is fairly simple. Vow to me that you will obliterate anyone that says they will take you away from me. Away from the Mortal Kingdom.”
My mind whirls around his words as they surround me, the consequences of them firing off like a distant siren in the back of my head.
But in front of me, there is a boy no more than ten, his body finally giving out and sagging in the guards’ hold as his chest rises and falls too quickly.
And there is no choice in this, there never was, but that’s always been part of King Dolian’s game.
Giving me the illusion of choosing when the only options were always curated by him.
“Okay,” I whisper, swallowing back the nausea that rises.
The king doesn’t respond, and when I turn to look at him over my shoulder, suspicion narrows his eyes and brackets his mouth.
“I will vow to never leave you. Vow to being yours, and you can command me to kill anyone who tries to take me away from you. Who tries to take me away from this kingdom.” There are no loopholes in my wording, no skirting around the magic that will lock me into this deal.
But I can give this version of myself to him.
I can stop pretending that the person here worthy of being saved is me.
Still, the king does not move beyond a twitch of his fingers at my hip.
“Command me,” I say, wrapping the words up as a plea while staring into his eyes. “And let the boy return to his family.”
“The boy is free to go,” he says, gesturing with his chin to Xander.
“Come. You’ll be our witness. The rest of you, clean them up.
” Plucking the dagger from my hand, King Dolian hands it to Xander, whose eyes try to catch mine as he takes it and returns it to the sheath at his belt.
But I won’t risk the king suspecting anything between us, so I keep my gaze down as I’m tugged away from the carnage I’ve created.
But the boy’s cries draw my attention back over my shoulder, and I watch as the boy falls to his knees and turns to look at the dead woman lying next to Sterling. “Promise me that you will return him to his parents,” I say through the broken beating of my heart.
“I’m afraid that is impossible.”
I turn to look at the back of King Dolian’s head as we pass the guarded doors, a cold sweat breaking out over my body. “Why?” Behind me, the boy begins to wail again, the sound pained. Torturous.
“Because you just killed them.”