I've known it since I felt her take that blade, known it the way I know the sun will rise and the curse will never break. The difference is that I want her to succeed—want it with a desperation that tastes like hope, which is the cruelest thing of all.
The door swings open onto darkness. Embers dying in the hearth, shadows pooling thick in every corner. But I see her immediately, feel her through the bond like a hook buried deep between my ribs—pressed against the wall where the shadows are deepest, good sight lines, solid wall at her back.
Steel gleams in her hand, precious and beautiful and speaking my death like a lover speaks their true love's name.
"Kess," I breathe, and her name in my mouth sounds like a prayer.
She steps forward out of the shadows. Wild hair tangled around her face, amber eyes burning in the darkness, the blade rising toward my heart with deadly purpose. She's beautiful in ways that make my chest ache, beautiful like a blade is beautiful, like fire is beautiful—dangerous and bright and capable of destroying everything I am.
"Do it," I tell her.
I relax my hands, let them drop by my side, open and empty, my arms spread wide to show how defenseless I am. My chest is bare—the dragon in me runs hot, and the cold air soothes my skin. The moonlight slides across the room from the open window, illuminating the skin above my heart, right where her eyes land, right where she should sink the blade in deep to end my torment.
"I won't stop you."
Her blade wavers, just for a moment—just enough to tell me she's surprised. No doubt she's been expecting a fight all day, has anticipated it. That's why she's been looking for an escape route, why she hid food away—she believes that once she's done, she'll need to run. She has no idea that there isn't a soul around who would avenge me.
"You want to die?" She sounds incredulous, like it never occurred to her.
"I've wanted to die for three hundred years." The words pour out of me like blood from an old wound. "I've tried and failed time and time again. Threw myself down cliffs. Burned a forest with dragon fire, shifted to my human form, and burned in it. The curse... it won't let me die by my own hand." There's a sharp intake of breath in the silence as my words sink end. I leave out the countless other ways I've tried, including handing a blade to my head guardsman and ordering him to slice my throat open.The scar that resulted is flat and minimal now, and that man long dead from old age. "But you could do it. You survived my claiming when so many others couldn't, and there's something about you, Kess. You could end this. You could end it all. Do it."
She takes a step forward, raises her weapon and sets it in the killing spot. The blade presses against my sternum, dimpling the skin, and through the bond I feel her heartbeat racing with fear—not of me, but of something else. Fear of herself. Fear of what she's about to do: take a life.
"I hate you," she whispers.
"You should."
"You deserve to die."
"I do."
Steel bites into my skin, blood welling around the point of the dagger. Her hands slip, move, cutting a thin dark line that catches the light from the dying embers. The pain is nothing—I've felt worse a thousand times—but her hand is shaking harder now, her eyes wide, and I watch it happen with an ache in my chest that feels like grief.
The moment her resolve crumbles.
The moment her arm goes weak.
The blade falls from her loosened grip and clatters on the stone floor, the end of yet another attempt to stop the curse that thrums in my blood. Inside me, the beast crows with delight, yet again coming out on top.
"I can't." Her voice quavers, her eyes wide and wild, just like they were on that altar. "Why can't I kill you?"
She makes a sound that's half sob, half snarl—something feral caught in a trap of its own making—and then she runs. Past me, through the door, down the corridor with the bond screaming her anguish into my chest.
I don't follow.
Just stand there in the darkness with her blade at my feet and my blood cooling on my chest, trying to understand what just happened. She had me. Steel against my heart, permission to finish it, every reason in the world to push that blade home and end three hundred years of suffering.
And she couldn't do it.
I bend down and pick up the dagger. The hilt is still warm from her grip.
Through the bond, I feel her in the memorial hall—grief and shame bleeding through the connection, sharp enough to cut. She's apologizing to the dead, I realize. Apologizing for failing them.
She thinks she's weak.
I turn the blade over in my hands, watching my blood dry on the steel, and I don't know what to think at all.
She couldn't kill me.
