Chapter 59
Tonight is Dagen’s twenty-sixth birthday. If I could give him a family with a wife and children, that’s what I’d give him. All he has is me. So, I gave him a promise that he will always have me. And a pastry, of course.
“I am not going through with it.”
Not in this outfit.
I peer down at the red tassels barely covering what needs to be covered. Red lacey straps wrap around my torso and thighs. I snap my robe tight over this atrocity. “I fail to see how wearing this will keep you out of my head.”
Dae leans against the closet archway. He’s in a deep-red button-up shirt, so dark it’s almost black. “I know someone who may be able to teach you how to block your mind, but you’ll have to blend in.”
“Blend in where? A whorehouse?”
A dark brow raises, along with the corner of his lips. “It’s a high-end establishment.”
“Not in this outfit,” I say, peeking inside my robe again.
Tassels.
Tassels scream, “Look at me! Give me attention!” The only thing I’d put tassels on is an ugly pet I keep forgetting to feed. Then at least the tassels would serve a purpose.
A pang enters my chest. All this fashion sense is all from Liha. Her voice sounded so shallow when she left my shield last night before the ball.
I shuffle through the box Preysee discreetly delivered this afternoon.
“So, your objection is not the sneaking out, the whorehouse, or trusting a stranger to help with mind blocking . . . It’s your outfit.”
“Precisely.”
Liha has definitely worn off on me over the years, but who wants to go out looking like a smut clown?
“Well, what type of outfit would be acceptable to you?”
“It has to be a dancer’s outfit?”
A wicked grin curls. “I assure you, even the patrons are dressed in similar attire. But the dancers are a little more . . .” He tilts his head. “Protected, I guess you’d say.”
“How so?”
I dig through red straps, red feathers, red sequins, red lace until I find it. Red leather.
“No one touches the dancers without my permission.”
I raise a brow. “What if I want to be touched?”
His lips press together. “Not by these men you don’t. Besides, you’re betrothed.”
“I told you. I have not given myself to him in any way. I am the only one who can give myself away. Not my father.”
“What if you had promised him your hand?” he says softly.
“Then I’d be his and only his, but I’m not.” I examine the smooth piece in my hand. “Wait, what do you mean no one touches the dancers without your permission?”
He shrugs. “Exactly what I said.”
“So, you run this whorehouse?”
“Sort of.”
I shake my head. “Whatever. Out.”
When I walk out of the closet, he’s lying on my bed, arms pinned beneath his head, his brows pinched as he looks at the ceiling. He sits up, a sudden tightness throughout his body.
“Put the robe back on.”
“Why?” I look down at the new outfit. Red leather scales writhe up and around my torso, jutting into sharp points.
His fingers curl into my black comforter. “For my sanity.”
Dae guides me past my unconscious guards after having slipped an enchanted sleeping potion into their dinners earlier. I hope for their sake the potion bottle was labeled correctly.
I tug my cloak tighter over the scarlet outfit as we approach King’s Hall. “Where are we going?”
Dae’s spirit walks beside me, and I swear his hand rests at the small of my back. “Besides a visit to your favorite painting?”
Before I can growl out a retort, footsteps pad toward us from the upcoming hall.
Haren, my father’s maid, hustles toward me with a sense of urgency until she’s planted right in front of me.
“Where’s Preysee? I mean”—she curtsies—“have you seen your handmaid, my lady?”
“No, I let her take the night off,” I say, a layer of worry settling over me.
“Tell her she’s in the linen room,” Dae says beside me.
“I think she may be in the linen room.”
Haren nods and bustles past, lifting her skirts to keep from tripping.
I’m about to ask if he saw her memories, but my mouth freezes as we approach my father’s quarters, and every bad memory from that room surfaces.
Dae turns to ice around me, and for the first time he’s told me what he is, a wave of fear sweeps through me.
He feels like death.
“Think of anything else,” he growls.
I grasp for any other memory, but my mind only supplies bad ones. Whips, daggers, back-handed slaps, insults, abandonment—
Dagen materializes, shoves us through the door and pins me against the inside wall. He takes my face in his hands. His eyes are no longer hazel. They’re black. Not black in the center, like mine. Entirely, lethally black.
But his hands are gentle.
“Nizzara,” he breathes. “Happy. Memories.”
I can’t help it. With his face—his lips—so close to mine, my mind flashes to fourteen-year-old me, kissing his portrait in Kings’ Hall.
The blackness recedes from his eyes. The deadly set of his lips loosen.
I become suddenly aware of me pressed against the wall—by him—his gentle hands still on my cheeks, and those lips—
My head tilts up, just a fraction.
He stiffens, then pushes away, an entirely different kind of pain crossing his dark eyes. “I know I’m a tease,” he says, voice thick, “but it can’t go further than that.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Because of who my father is?”
His jaw flexes, then releases. “Because of who I am.”
I push off the wall. “I don’t care that you’re a spirit—”
“I’m a killer. A god’s-damned mercenary. Who isn”t even alive. I”m a monster, Nizzara.”
I flinch.
He clenches his hands. “Don’t give me any part of you. Do you understand?”
Stinging builds behind my eyes, but I raise my chin and square my shoulders. “Someone once told me we can choose not to be monsters.”
He turns away. “Yeah, well, I made the choice a long time ago, and I chose wrong.” He opens the door that descends to the punishment room.
I halt beside the massive bed overflowing with satin pillows and throws. “I’m not going down there.”
“It’s the quickest and easiest way out of the castle.”
“Then you go.” I spin on my heel. “I’ll go train for my next duel or maybe jump off a cliff.”
Out of the corner of my eye I catch him vanishing. When I’m fully turned for the exit, I meet his solid chest blocking the door to the hall.
Heat simmers up my chest, the I’m-going-to-punch-you-in-the-jaw kind. “Move.”
He has the audacity to give me that look. The I-fucking-burn-for-you-look, the mash pit of pain and insatiable desire.
“I will never make you do anything,” he says. “But I am not the only being who can see parts of your mind. Do you really want to leave it unprotected?”
I glare up at him. Why does he have to make sense?
When I don’t argue, or move, he says, “What if I give you a memory? I owe you one.”
I fold my arms. What he owes me is a hot, meaningless kiss. With him looking at me like this, I want more than a kiss.
I catch my mistake as soon as his brows rise.
My damn desires!
Red-hot blood surges to my face as I go to move around him.
He blocks me again. I must be quite the spectacle because the black is fully gone from his eyes, and his white teeth are peeking through a full-fledged smile.
Fuck, that does twisty things to my stomach.
“A hot, meaningless kiss?” he says, his expression is all play, but the deeper set in his eyes is still the man he was five minutes ago. Serious and unyielding. “Of all the things you could desire, why that?”
I’m not getting into this. I sidestep again, but he moves with me.
He folds his arms, waiting. Despite the anger still coursing through me, I’m too tired to wipe the floor with his ass. Not to mention I’m wearing a barely-there dancer’s outfit.
His brows furrow. “You can talk to me.” I see why Lo loved her brother so much.
I sigh. “If I lose, I’ll be forced to go through with the betrothal. Wouldn’t you want one kiss that wasn’t decided for you? Before you’re married off to some stranger, or run through with a Zem blade?”
Golden threads seem to glow in his dark hair under the chandelier as he tilts his head closer. “That’s why you wish to win? To end the betrothal rule?”
I nod. “When I become Queen of Zarr, I will rain hell down on anyone who touches a bondslave.” My fists tighten. “A betrothal will get in the way of that.”
He steps forward, an intense war raging in his gaze as it dips to my lips. “A hot, meaningless kiss?” His breath is warm on my lips and his scent . . . Realms, it’s good. “That’s all you want?”
Fourteen-year-old me goes weak in the knees, wanting to climb him like a tree, but thankfully, twenty-one-year-old me has too much pride for that.
I tug his shirt, a slow, deliberate motion, bringing his head closer to mine. My lips almost brush his when I say, “I don’t want one anymore.”
I let go of his shirt and descend the stairs into silent darkness.
“You cruel little beast,” he growls behind me, but there is nothing but sinful play in his voice. He vanishes to spirit and follows behind me.
My smug bravado only lasts until my foot touches the stone floor at the bottom of the stairs, the door to father’s torture room directly to my right.
“Keep going.” His cool pocket of electrically charged air nudges against my back.
My father’s barbed whip cracks in my mind. Over and over. Were his punishments from him or were they all his spirit? My mind lingers on each time, each crack of the whip.
“Nizzara,” Dae growls.
I force my feet to move down the corridor. Wooden slab doors pop up on my left and right.
“What lies behind those doors?”
It takes a moment before he answers. “When I ruled, I allowed bondslaves to hide here.”
“Bondslaves? Down here?”
“I was fighting the slave laws, but it takes decades for change of that magnitude. I didn’t want them to wait that long, so I smuggled some out of slavery through tunnels and hid them here until I could provide safe passage to the lower continent.”
“That’s—”
“Reckless?”
“Admirable,” I whisper. “That’s why you asked for tunnel rights when you won the King’s Duel.”
His presence darkens. “I originally asked them to free their slaves—or offer them wages with proper living conditions,” he says, “but that’s when I learned the kings only bestow what they want to bestow.”
“They denied you?”
“All three kings must be in agreement for the bestowment. That’s why no champion has ever walked away with something as ridiculous as a kingdom. King Rajim and King Tigous both denied my request. Their economies would fall apart without bondslaves.”
“What lies behind the doors now?”
“I cannot see. There is some sort of power blocking them, even from me.”
It”s a while before he says, “He’s possessed, isn”t he?”
All I can do is nod when the tightness enters my throat. “He always had anger issues,” I finally get out. “He always was inclined to violence, but he was a good father to me”—my voice breaks—“until he wasn’t.”
I take a shaky breath. “I can’t decide if that makes the whole thing better, knowing it’s not him who chokes and whips me, or if it makes it worse knowing I ignored the signs. Maybe I could’ve stopped it.”
For the first time in so long, I allow the good memories of him to come through. “He used to read to me.” A teary laugh blubbers up. “He hated books, but when he visited during his time as your father’s infantry general, he read whatever atrociously sized book I laid in his lap.” I smile. “Not all of it, but a chapter or so. He told me stories about the other six realms. He told me of the Jaxelli Warriors in Xoshbesh and the Sand Gladiators in Heshena with vivid detail, as if he’d been there himself. He made the stories come alive.”
Dae’s darkness swirls around me, listening. His presence, just like in the weight room, is soothing to me.
“Sorry, I know he’s done terrible things—”
“But he’s your father,” he says. “And you are loyal.”
I nod.
His dark essence brushes my cheek as if to wipe the tear trailing down. “As much as I hate your father,” he says, “I cannot hate your heart.”
A charged silence stretches between us. I’ve stopped walking and his ghostly chest is right in front of me. “It is the most beautiful thing about you.”
I swat my hand through his chest and continue walking. “So, what you’re saying is I have a nice personality.”
He materializes directly in front of me, so suddenly I smack into him. He glares down at me. “Do not twist my words. I’ve seen every type of woman. Elf, fairy, warrior, priestess, and witch. I’ve been to all seven realms and you”—he wipes my tears, brushing his thumb across my cheek—“are the only one who returned some warmth to my chest.”
His coy smirk breaks through his lips. “Among other places.”
I shove his chest without much force and continue down the dim tunnel. “You are a shameless flirt.”
He returns to spirit. “Only with you.”
I side-eye him. “Because I’m the only woman who can hear you.”
“Because I don’t flirt with more than one woman. Not my thing.”
“Even though it’s just flirting. Nothing more.”
“Exactly.”
We continue walking in comfortable silence until he says, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Sorren is right. Your father is losing his battle with his spirit, and you might be the only one with a chance of ending—”
I spin on him so fast it surprises even me. “I will never take a life.”
The temperature drops around me. “Even to save lives?”
My hands clench, my internal boiling point rising, but I’m at a loss for words.
“I know you value life, but sometimes a life has to be taken for the greater good.”
“You don’t get it! I am too much like him. His spirit isn’t responsible for all of his shortcomings. He was not a kind person before he became possessed. I crave violence like he does. It’s as if I was bred for it. That is why I cannot cross that line.”
He is silent for so long I wonder if his whole rose-colored view of me just shattered.
“I don’t want to be a monster,” I breathe through the rising sting in my throat.
His cool, velvety essence encases me. “That’s exactly why you have to be the one to do it.”
“What if I go down the same road he did?”
Dark tendrils of him surround me like an embrace. “I’ll remind you who you are.”
He materializes ahead of me, his jaw tight with some sort of intense emotion as he presses his palm into a stone in the wall. It sinks like a button being pressed and part of the wall drops away, revealing another tunnel lit with red glo stones. Its marbled floors and taller ceiling stretch into the distance.
“This way.” He relaxes his expression, and it returns to his usual coy indifference.
I follow him, jumping at the grating sound of the stone wall sealing behind us. Before long, a red gleam catching my eye in a dim-lit room ahead.
“The garage?” I say, but these cars are different from my father’s. This room is not the same gigantic cut-out where my father’s royal cars wait. These cars are . . . sexier. There isn’t a better word to describe them.
He shakes his head, a stray tousle of his hair kissing his forehead. “This is my garage.”
Three cars take up the entire space, including a red one. His favorite from Lo.
“Take your pick. They are all melded with gems. This one”—he pats the black one, small and compact with the crouch of a predator—“has a void gem in the engine. Makes it disappear from view.”
I eye the black beast in front of me, keeping my mind purposefully blank, so I don’t panic. “I thought melding was rare.”
“It is. Because the fourth kingdom handled all that tech stuff, and since that craft is so dangerous, the three remaining kings banned people from trying to learn it years ago,” he says, running his hand along the gleaming metal, not a speck of dust in sight.
“And because of things like soul guns,” I supply from my reading.
His eyes find mine, “Yeah, because of inventions like those.”
“This one,” he grins, moving on to the sultry red one with curves like a woman. “This one’s engine has a blare gem, a—”
“A red gem that amplifies,” I say, reciting text to keep me distracted.
His head tilts. “It’s fast.”
“What about that one?”
He swats the air. “That one has blare gem dust in its paint. Damn near indestructible.”
I eye the silver-box style of the third, sitting proud but dignified. Gold seeps in around the corners of the immaculate garage.
I breathe, then swallow. Mind blank. “This one.”
“I was hoping you’d pick this one.” He opens the red car’s passenger door for me, and I slip into its slick, black interior.
Dae evaporates into mist and in the same breath reappears in the driver’s seat, his face alight with boyish excitement, so much so I can almost feel it myself.
Lo was right. He looks so happy behind the wheel. I focus on that intoxicating smile. It’s the only thing that drowns my building anxiety.
The engine roars to life, the sound reverberates off the stone walls, and the sheer force vibrates my legs. He runs a hand along the steering wheel, to the gear shift, then stops, and changes course for me.
“Almost forgot,” he says, turning in his seat toward me. “The cloak has to go.”
“What?”
“It’s covering the harness.” He shrugs. “Safety first.”
“I will wipe that smirk off your face one of these days,” I mutter, but fumble my cloak off with shaking hands, trying to keep my mind blank.
“I hope you do.”
He leans over and both his hands run along my bare shoulders until he finds the thick harness straps. His fingers brush my décolletage, eyes focused on the buckle as he fastens it over my chest.
He stops and clears his throat, his eyes darkening in the best way. “It’s a five-point harness.”
I don’t break eye contact as I bring the bottom strap up between my legs and click it myself.
I fold my hands to keep him from seeing them shake. “Well, let’s go,” I say. He throws the gear shift left, then down in a smooth motion.
I grasp my harness with both hands.
“What about your seatbelt?” I squeak as the car roars backward, its harness digging into my thighs as we reverse.
Spinning the steering wheel with one hand, he slides his hazel gaze to me. “I’m already dead, Izzy.”
We lurch to a stop, and my hand flies out, bracing against the door as he reaches for the gear shift again.
“Izzy?” I gasp, my heart pounding.
“Yeah. Izzy.” He pumps the clutch with his foot and grabs second gear, skipping over first.
Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay—
The car roars forward, pinning my head to the seat as we speed up through the low-ceiling garage tunnel, him shifting into higher and higher gears as we go.
“Why? Do you not like it?”
I fight the urge to squeeze my eyes shut. “No, I don—”
“Good,” he says, smiling in the red glow of the dash. “That means it will stick.”
My nails bite into the leather harness. “Fine. Then, I’ll give you a nickname you hate.”
His grin gets bigger when he looks over to me. “Like shadow daddy?” He winks. “I would absolutely hate that one.”
“What a ridiculous—”
A giant black something flies past my window.
“Watch where you’re driving! You might be dead, but I’m not.”
He doesn’t look away from me as the rock formations scattered around the walls of the palace soar past us so fast, I’m not even sure if that’s what the dark smears are.
He wiggles his brows. “Are you scared, Nizzara?”
His head is still turned toward me without so much as a glance at the windshield.
“Yes!”
The tears slip. I can’t stop them—the images of my father’s car in flames, me trapped inside, and him drunk and passed out.
He hits the brakes. “Shit, Nizzara.” The car slams to a stop.
I jerk my face toward my window, hating that the fear won, forcing me to relive the smell of skin burning, and being trapped in my seat belt.
Gold swirls in and outside of the car.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
My hands tremble in rock hard fists at my sides. “Because I don’t want to be afraid.”
He evaporates to mist and jets to my side of the car, his midnight calm, wrapping around me.
“Nizzara.”
“It’s nothing.” I swipe a tear away. How do I explain how powerless I feel riding inside a car, or how it reminds me of the night my father changed?
What’s worse is he can read every memory of my father, both good and bad. Memories of being choked and slapped, followed by when he gave me my first dagger and taught me how to fight, when he always took my side no matter what argument I was in, or him cheering at my early duels. He never missed one.
Then back to bad, like the night he caught Tian hugging me. The hug that got him killed.
How can I explain my love and hate? How the only reason I am as strong as I am, is because of him.
Dae’s presence nudges my cheek. “It’s not nothing if it hurts you.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
As if my mind is determined to embarrass me to the maximum degree, it replays his rejection of our kiss, and his attempt to kiss me afterward because he felt bad. I flinch, not wanting to think about how much it stung, because he’s not just any person.
He’s Dae.
Before I can shut down my memories, he materializes outside my door and throws it open, hitting my skin with cold winter air. When he crouches, bringing his intense gaze to my lips, knots form in my stomach.
He runs a hand through his hair. “You think I didn’t kiss you because I don’t want you?”
I don’t answer, but he takes my silence as a yes.
“Fuck.” His gaze locks on mine, no play, no smirk. Dead serious and nothing but pain. “I nearly reduced that Megadome to rubble yesterday. When your knees hit that mat—”
He closes his eyes, the wind turning sharper around us. “I didn’t care that it was a duel. It took everything I had to let that infantry soldier live. All because. . .” He trails off, his eyes going dark.
My eyes narrow. “Because you want my soul.”
His voice is a deep velvet. “I do. I want everything that has to do with you. I want your death glare pointed at me. I want that damn lip to myself. I want your black eyes and menacing hands all over me. Your smile. Your anger. Your tears. All of it.” He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “And that’s why I can’t have any part of you.”
“So, you’re saying you didn’t kiss me because you wanted to.” I glare. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He chuckles, but the sound dies as he shakes his head. “I will not take any part of you. No kiss, no touch, no soul.”
“You’re touching me now.” His hand is still cupping my cheek.
He smirks. “My hands are always the last to get the message.” His gaze drops to my lips and his eyes burn before he closes my door, blocking out the frigid air. He doesn’t materialize in the driver’s seat right away.
My eyes have adjusted enough to the dark that I see we’ve skirted the outer walls of the city in a half-circle, the car idling amongst lifeless boulders and hard-packed dirt patched with skiffs of snow. The Barren territory. I squint into the darkness, past the first few boulders, to see if the stories of near mythical rogues are true. I swear I catch a patch of blackness moving. Chills crawl up my spine.
Dae finally re-enters the car and grabs the gear shift. “I’ll go slow,” he says.
”No.”
I face things. It’s what I do. My father may be a mess of awful in a lot of ways, but he’s always been right about pain and fear.
Pain and fear make you stronger but only if you face them head-on.
I grip my harness. “Don’t go slow.”
Something like awe radiates from his side of the car. Somehow, I feel it. “Just keep your eyes on the road—dirt—whatever.” I point at the windshield. “Keep them pointed that way.”
He grins. “That I can do.”