I stared at the dagger in my hand again, then looked up at him. My heart was thumping so hard I could barely hear a word anyone was saying. It didn’t help that the world itself was shaking, and the wind wouldn’t cease, but I had heard the Prince just fine. I knew what he wanted me to do. What he needed me to do.
“I… I don’t know if…” I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Dahlia!” Cillian yelled, and I saw the look on his face now; not of surrender, but of courage. He wasn’t giving up, he just knew this was right, and he was giving me an opening. “I can’t hold him forever,” the Prince said.
“She wouldn’t,” Radulf growled. “Don’t you see? Her love is as strong as her greed. She wants you all to herself; she won’t give that up now—not when she’s so close.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Cillian said. “You know what you have to do. You promised you would.”
“Think carefully,” Radulf’s voice lowered a little more. “Think about what we can give you… you could be our queen. I would be willing to share…”
I scanned my surroundings, because I didn’t want to look directly at the Prince. Mira had gotten back up, but she was only just standing upright with Toross’ help. The other moon children were in their wolf forms, watching me from where they sat. Mel and Gullie were doing their best to hold up the shield, but it was failing, and there were more Wenlow than I could count on the other side of it.
I turned my eyes up at the Prince and slowly stepped up to him.
“You have… to hurry…” Cillian groaned.
My dagger burned in my hand. I had it so tightly gripped, I never thought my fingers would unclench again. “I don’t know if I can,” I said.
“You have to,” Cillian said, “You’re the only one who can get close.”
“Because of our bond…”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“If I don’t do this, darkness reins… and I lose you. If I do this, I lose you. I lose us.”
“If you don’t kill me now, we all lose everything, Dahlia.”
I shut my eyes. Somehow, it felt like the wind wasn’t as intense, here; like we were directly in the Veridian’s narrow eye. “You’re a jerk,” I said.
“I… what?” he asked.
“You kidnapped me from my home, you forced me to take part in some stupid contest, and you could very well have gotten me killed many times over.”
“I’m—I’m sorry, Dahlia.”
I shook my head. “I’m not.” I looked up at him. “I learned more about myself than I ever thought possible because of you. I saw my parents again, and met my flesh and blood family because of you. I fell in love because of you. With you. I would do it all again if I had to.”
Cillian, though strained, forced a smile. “As would I,” he said, “Although perhaps next time… I would ask you first.”
I stepped a little closer to him and placed my hand on his cheek. “I love you, Cillian…” I said, swallowing the catch in my throat.
He wanted to touch me, but he couldn’t. It took everything he had just so he could keep talking to me. But I noticed something I hadn’t expected to see. A single tear rolled down his cheek. It quickly turned to ice on his skin, then melted again. I brushed the stream with my thumb.
“I love you, Dahlia…” he struggled to say, “I would have turned the world over to keep you.”
I shut my eyes again, fighting back the tears, and pressed the tip of my dagger against his chest. “Don’t do it!” Radulf roared, and the world shook.
I held onto Cillian’s body with one hand to stop from falling over, screamed, and then plunged the dagger into his chest—right into his heart. A thunderous cacophony of lightning and booming erupted all around me. Cillian lost his footing and fell, and I fell with him, on top of him. Not once did I let go of the dagger, nor did I pull it out of his chest.
I was screaming, inconsolable, wild. I hated Radulf, I hated Cillian, I hated the world for what it had made me do. Everything that had come before now had been a test, but how could it have been leading to this? This moment, this final, dark moment. It wasn’t only unfair—it was cruel, a joke from a twisted higher power with a sick sense of humor.
The Veridian rumbled and howled around me, the wind getting worse before it started to dissipate. Under me, under Cillian, the snow started turning red as his blood spread through it. His eyes were open, and he was gargling, choking on the blood pooling in his mouth and spilling down the side of his face.
I couldn’t bare to look at him. I didn’t want that horrifying sight to be the way I remembered him. Instead, I pressed my face against his chest and sobbed. All around me, the Veridian seemed to fall away to silence. Before it was gone, the Prince’s body jerked and convulsed, then it settled again. But I couldn’t move.
I didn’t move.
I stayed exactly where I was, hoping he would rise again, hoping I hadn’t just killed the man I loved moments after finally telling him how I felt. We had both known it for days. We’d felt it from each other, but the words had never come. Not until now.
I wish I’d said them sooner.
I should’ve told him sooner.
Maybe that would’ve made our bond stronger…
“Dahlia,” came a voice from behind me. It was Mira. She placed her hands on my shoulders, but I shrugged her off me.
“Leave me,” I said.
“I won’t leave you out here.”
“I don’t want to go back without him.”
“And we won’t, but you need to stand up first… please.”
I kept my eyes shut, planted one hand on his chest, and slowly lifted myself. My other hand was still wrapped around my dagger, and my dagger was still wedged in his heart. I unfurled my fingers, figuring that was better than pulling it out of his body.
Mira helped me the rest of the way up, and once I was on my feet, I turned around and threw my arms around her. I cried, now, letting it all out. Mel and Gullie approached and wrapped themselves around me. The Veridian was gone, and so were the Wenlow in the trees.
“I’m sorry,” Mel said, but I could barely hear what she said, let alone muster the willpower to reply.
I was broken, finished. There was nothing left of me. By killing the Prince, I had killed part of myself, too. I could feel it. Not the break in the bond he and I shared, but the absence of it. It was as if our bond had never existed in the first place, and it made me feel hollow.
“We should get the others,” Mira said, “Head back to the village. We’ll give him a proper burial.”
I grabbed hold of her clothes more tightly, pulling her closer to me. Mira returned the embrace, resting her head next to mine. “It’s going to be alright,” she whispered. “We have you, and we have each other.”
“Thank you…” I whispered between sobs.
“Come on. Let’s get back to—"
“—look out!” I screamed, and I pushed her aside just as my dagger came hurtling toward us. The dagger struck me in the shoulder. I flew several feet and fell on my back from the force of the impact, dazed, winded, confused. I had seen Cillian’s face the instant before the dagger had hit, but that couldn’t have been right.
He was dead.
Wasn’t he?
Chaos exploded around me again. There was shouting, the sounds of a fight going on. I was out of it, my brain barely capable of processing what was going on. A dagger protruded out of my shoulder, and I was bleeding from the wound. I could feel my own blood trickling out of it and tainting the snow underneath me.
Slowly, I turned my head up to see what was happening, and I had to suck in a sharp breath.
Cillian was standing. Toross charged toward him, but with the wave of a hand, he sent Toross hurtling through the air and onto his back like he was weightless. Then Melina, then Jaleem, Ashera—one by one, they all followed. None of them could get close to him, and he seemed not to be breaking a sweat. When our eyes locked, I realized, his weren’t blue any
more, but deep black—like pools of shadow.
“Not him…” I said, still dazed.
The Prince angled his head to the side and looked at me. For an instant I thought he was about to come down on me, finish me off, but he restrained himself. “Fine,” he said, almost to himself. “But that’s the last favor I do for you.”
“W-wait…” I tried to reach for him, but my shoulder shrieked with so much pain I almost lost consciousness.
I saw him walk away, just barely. He headed for the trees, then pushed into them, melting into the night. No one else had been able to stop him, or even get close to him. In moments, he was gone. He wasn’t Cillian anymore, but Radulf—and he was gone. But the worst part wasn’t that he’d come back from the dead, and his brother had taken even more control of his body.
The worst part was that I couldn’t feel our bond at all.
It really was gone.
And so was the Prince.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It had been a week since I’d seen the Prince. Maybe two. There was no way of knowing. The days and nights all merged together into one long, never-ending string after the exorcism. I wasn’t sure how long it took for me to heal the wound in my shoulder. I wasn’t eating. Barely drinking. If not for Mira’s insistence, I probably would’ve crumpled into myself.
I had crumpled, who was I kidding?
The days dragged on, the nights twisted to become nightmares, and everywhere I looked, he was there. Not Cillian, but Radulf, infecting every last one of the few good memories I had of my time with the Prince. I felt hurt, strangely betrayed, and violated; not to mention, humiliated.
How much of it had been Cillian?
How much of it had been Radulf?
I thought I had gotten so good at telling them apart, I had barely given any strength to the idea that maybe I was wrong sometimes. That maybe Radulf was better at hiding than I gave him credit for. It still made me shudder and shake. Even when I thought I didn’t have the energy to tremble, a memory would flash into my mind, and I’d see that awful, shadowy face on top of me, hear it panting, and groaning, and I would curl further into myself.
I was always cold, now. Empty. Numb.
“This is unacceptable,” came Mira’s sharp, cold voice like a biting wind.
I didn’t open my eyes. Instead, I turned onto my other side and tucked myself deeper into my blankets which seemed to do nothing for the cold.
“Get up,” Mira said. “It’s time to leave.”
That got my attention. “Leave?” I grumbled.
“Yes. We’ve been here far too long. There are things to be done.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to get up.”
“You can’t very well spend the rest of your life in that bed.”
“Go away, Mira.”
She sighed. “We’re all worried about you, Dahlia. Gullie is worried about you.”
I shut my eyes even harder, trying to fight the tears welling up behind them. “I made it all worse…” I said. “I made everything so much worse.”
“You couldn’t have known. None of us did.” She paused, then came over to my bed and placed a hand on my shoulder. “We think it was a trap. We think Radulf manipulated us into doing exactly what he needed us to do, and we were all made fools.”
“I wasn’t just made a fool. I lost him. My bond, my Prince. It’s gone.”
Mira squeezed my shoulder. “It’s not.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s true, I’ve never had a bond as powerful as yours. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but the Prince is alive. Cillian is still alive.”
“That wasn’t Cillian.”
“Dahlia… we have all had time to go over, and over, and over what happened. We all saw it. We saw how he almost attacked you, but then restrained himself at the last moment. He could’ve killed you.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything. It means Cillian is still in there, somewhere—maybe the same way that Radulf has been this whole time. Buried. Submerged. Desperate to be freed.”
I opened my eyes again, wiped them with the back of my hand, and turned onto my other side to look at Mira. I hated how beautiful she looked right now, because it was impossible not to feel something when looking at her.
She almost looked like a different person, though. Mira had ditched most of her castle attire and was wearing something a little more tribal, a little more primal. Her long white hair had been knotted and braided, further accenting her angular face and pointed ears.
“You look different,” I said.
“You haven’t looked at me in well over a week,” she said, an eyebrow cocked. “This isn’t the only surprise, either, but you need to get up if you want to see them.”
I frowned. “I don’t want to get up.”
“That pitiful gaze may have worked for you back in the human world, but it won’t work with me. I’m your custodian, remember?”
“The selection is over,” I grumbled. “You’re not my custodian anymore.”
She shook her head. “Untrue. As long as you breathe, the selection continues… remember?”
I stared at her long and hard, the line in between my eyebrows pinching and deepening further. “What… are you saying?”
“Have you already forgotten what the prize for winning is?”
“No, but I don’t see…”
Mira’s eyes widened, as if she was waiting for me to figure something out by myself. “Mira, my brain hurts, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”
“The Prince? The winner gets to marry the Prince.”
“Radulf is the Prince.”
“Maybe that’s what it feels like to you, but you don’t know that, and you won’t know until you go back to the castle and see him.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Are you insane?”
“No, I’m thinking quite clearly, in fact. It took all of our collective brainpower to figure this one out, but we have a solution. Unfortunately, it only works if you get out of that bed.”
“Solution to what?”
Mira sighed. “Dahlia, do you want the Prince back? Do you want Cillian back?”
“I do.”
“Then you have to fight for him.”
“But the fight is over?”
“It’s not. You’re still alive. He’s still alive. Your bond is broken, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be restored, remember?”
Click. Like a puzzle piece, it fell into place. The winner of the Royal Selection doesn’t only get to marry the Prince, fate itself forges a soul bond between the two. That was why my bond with the Prince was so strange—he wasn’t meant to have been bonded to anyone until the selection was over.
“But you…” I paused, trying to think of a reason to object to this idea. I couldn’t. “What you’re suggesting is… I mean, it’s a long shot.”
“The longest.”
“And I’m not a very good shot.”
“No… you’re a terrible shot. But you’re sitting upright, and that’s an improvement.”
“I am?” I checked. I was. I had propped myself up on my elbows, and I hadn’t even realized it. “Mira… this would mean having to go back to the castle, seeing him again, and dealing with Radulf; maybe even the King.”
“Like you said, it’s a long shot, but the only other option is for you to sit here until, eventually, he comes for you again with an army to finish the selection—possibly before, or maybe even after he’s taken that army to Earth and killed your mothers.”
“My mothers…”
Mira took my hand and showed me the silvery tattoo on the back of it. “You can’t let that happen, and you’re the only one who can stop it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You have done a great many things you didn’t know how to do, and you’ve already done one of the hardest things imaginable. You killed the man you l
oved because you thought it would save the lives of strangers. You are the bravest, strongest person I know, and it would be my privilege to walk back into that castle with you and help you win this thing.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. My mind was racing with my heart, thoughts rushing through my head, possibilities blooming in front of me like a field of flowers in spring. This wasn’t going to be easy. Radulf had a huge head start on us—in fact, there was no way of knowing exactly where he was right now.
I could only hope he was at the castle, and at the same time, I hoped he wasn’t. I didn’t think I was ready to face him again. I never thought I would be, especially if he had taken full control of the Prince’s body and Cillian, my Cillian, was nowhere in sight.
How was I supposed to get close to him when the spirit in possession of the body was a crazy, demonic asshole, and my soul bond with Cillian was broken?
Not broken—absent. Broken implied there was something I could fix, some wrong I could right. I didn’t think that was the case. More than ever, I needed to go back to the castle and win the Royal Selection. It was the only way to get fate to stitch our souls back together again; or, at least, that was the theory, but a theory was all we had.
And it was enough.
I slid out of the bed with a serious purpose for what felt like the first time in weeks. Walking to the rack on the other side of the tent, I ran my fingertips over the long, blue dress I had lovingly hand-stitched together. Then I touched the white cloak hanging off it, feeling the fur under my hand.
“Alright,” I said, turning around to look at Mira. “It sounds dangerous, but it beats sitting around doing nothing.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mira said. “I’ll let you get changed and meet you outside. There’s one more thing you need to see before we leave.”
Nodding, I got to work getting out of the clothes I’d been living in for at least a few days—barring baths—and slid into the dress. I hadn’t had as much time with it as I had my other gowns, and I also hadn’t had the benefit of a sewing machine, but the dress fit me perfectly. The material was soft and warm, and the furry, white cloak covered my shoulders, arms, and neck, keeping the cold at bay.
Marked (The Coldest Fae Book 3) Page 20
