Dominic glanced around the room, as if he’d see the image Ace’s words painted. As if he’d remember being so broken he didn’t move for days.
Nothing came to mind. In fact, it sounded insane. With all Dominic had faced before coming to Andreilia, he didn’t know how there was any part of him left to be broken.
Butsomethinghad caused him to rip out his heart, to take his memories away.
What if Adara had been the reason? What ifshehad been the one to cause him so much pain and misery?
“I thought you died of dehydration or starvation!” Ace’s voice rose to a high-pitched panic. His brown eyes shone with tears, face twisted in agony. What the Hel had Dominic done? “And when I finally broke down your door . . . ” Ace’s voice faded into a quiet sob, tears running freely down his flushed cheeks.
At the sight of Ace—hands trembling, lips quivering as his mouth opened and closed but could not get any words out—something twisted inside of Dominic. He’d never seen Ace like this. He was always calm and collected. One of the reasons Dominic had chosen him to be his second. In Dominic’s absence, Andreilia would need a leader who wasn’t so easily riddled by emotion.
“I thought you were dead!” Ace yelled, hysterical.
Dominic flinched.
Ace shook his head in misery. “I wasn’t expecting to find you in a state worse than death.” His chest heaved rapidly, trying to gulp down air through his cries as he went on.
Dominic hated seeing him like this, but he needed to know what happened.
“You were lying there on the floor, weak and in a haze.” Ace gestured to a spot on the floor near the edge of Dominic’s bed, as if seeing him there. “Blood everywhere,” he breathed and ran a distressed hand through his brown hair. “There wasso much blood.” Ace’s eyes were glazed and distant, reliving the memory.
His hand drifted to his chest, where he knew that jagged scar was. Dominic sucked in a deep breath. He knew exactly where this was going.
Ace braced himself with a hand against the wall, taking deep breaths and closing his eyes, as if the dark would cleanse the memory from his mind. After a few moments, he continued, still shaking, but with a little more certainty. “You lay there in a pool of blood, a gaping hole in your chest that wasshredded.” Ace clenched his teeth, his frustration palpable, like he couldn’t decide whether to pity Dominic for what he’d done to himself, cry because he’d almost lost a friend, or rage because Dominic had left them all with the monster he’d turned into after removing his heart. “On the floor was an empty vial”—he took a deep, steadying breath— “and a bloodied heart, practically ripped to pieces.” Ace’s hand found his own chest, like it would shield his heart from what Dominic was capable of.
“When you finally woke up, I asked what happened. You told me you didn’t know. You said you only knew that there was so much pain . . . and then it was gone.”
The next few days after drinking the concoction were such a blur. Dominic only remembered that he had deposited his broken heart into the Plagued Sea, where it could torture the creatures of the ocean rather than him.
Ace sighed and shook his head. “You can’t get them back, Dominic.”
How weak and pathetic did Ace believe him to be? Dominic didn’t need his protection, his pity.
Ace’s voice cracked. A broken, desperate plea. “I can’t see you like that again.”
Dominic stared back at him, loathing whatever writhed inside his chest, his head, at seeing Ace like this. But it didn’t matter. Ace was a dead end. He didn’t know, and Dominic still didn’t remember.
Something inside him burned, skittering along his bones, eager to be released. Dominic’s features twisted into a sickening snarl, and suddenly he was upon Ace in a blur. The room, the trees, the whole damnisland, shuddered at the impact of Ace’s back slamming into the wall. Wood groaned beneath him. Ace’s eyes shot wide open as Dominic’s hand wrapped around his throat, fingers squeezing so tightly that his nails pierced Ace’s skin. Dominic’s lips twitched upward at the warm blood sliding over his fingertips.
Hands clawed at Dominic’s arms, but he ignored Ace’s struggle, lifting him off the floor. “Listen here, and listen closely,” Dominic sneered through gritted teeth. “Don’tevertell me what to do. This ismylife.”My pain,he thought. “It ismychoice if I want to remember.”
Feet dangling inches above the floorboards, Ace’s legs kicked back and forth, scrambling for purchase. His hands raked across Dominic’s, attempting to loosen his iron grip.
A stone against which the force of the sea crashed and could not move, Dominic held on tighter. Who was Ace to say what completely destroyed Dominic? To make demands thinking he knew what was best. Dominic could never be destroyed. He’d made sure of that by becoming the King of Keys.
Maybe Ace was lying to him. Lying straight through that mouth that gasped for air that would not come beneath his crushing grip. Perhaps Ace knew everything and was keeping it from him.
But Dominic didn’t care. His voice dropped low. “You disobey me again, and I’ll make what a lykren can do to you seem like child’s play.”
Ace trembled beneath his grasp, and Dominic couldn’t think of anything more satisfying.
“Understood?” he demanded, teeth clenched so tightly they might shatter.
Ace frantically nodded—as much as he could beneath Dominic’s suffocating hold.
“Good.”
Fingers splaying, Dominic released his grip. His second collapsed to the floor, hands flying to his neck, rubbing at his bruising skin.
