“For being someone who is not afraid to break me,” she said.
He smiled sadly. “You are not easily broken, Raphonminder. And as luck should have it...neither am I. I’ll send order to let you pass into the prison. But what you will find there...”
Her Uncle’s mind was shattered.
And he had been a part of seeing to it.
“I can handle it,” she said.
He smiled weakly, seconds from passing out. “I know.”
The servants carried him away.
And as consciousness left him, he realized...shemight not be broken.
But Kinlear?
He could be.
Oh,gods,he could be, for he swore he felt his own heartcracka little when he looked her in the eyes...and lied.
He didn’t deserve her. Not one godsdamned bit.
28
Into a runic sleep, he went.
He felt like a child again, a boy fighting to hang onto life, as the Ehvermages marked him. And just like that, he was gone to this world...
...and waking up, as he always did, in the next.
But when he entered his dreams tonight, he was surprised to find that he wasnotfalling through the dark sky, a helpless, tumbling thing. He wasnotforced to watch the future play out.
He was, instead, back at the entrance to his dark and dying woods. Where it all began.
And there, just inside the tree line...
His monster was waiting for him.
“I killed you,” Kinlear said. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
His Veilblade was in his hands in an instant, but the monster did not move to attack him.
It only shrugged, pulled the hood back from its head, and said, “You killed the idea of me, Little Prince. But I was still there, watching and waiting, all along.”
Kinlear lunged towards it, furious.
But the monster easily sidestepped him, and batted out with a clawed hand, so fast, Kinlear hadn’t even seen it until he realized his Veilblade was missing.
The beast hadstolenit from his grasp.
And now he would die.
He would die, just like this...the way it was always supposed to end.
“Funny,” the monster said, as the snow began to dance down from the sky, and the wind blew hard enough that the skeletal trees rattled with the sound of quaking bones. “You’re still afraid of me. Why?”
“Because you’re a monster,” Kinlear growled, as he pressed his back against an aspen tree. The eyes of thousands of others in the forest seemed to be glaring down at him...eager to watch him finally die.
