CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
My strangled whisper sounds in the cold silence. “How is this happening?” I cast a panicked glance at the room. “Is this my price?”
He gives a labored shake of his head. “When your heart broke, I broke,” he says.
The echo is so quiet now that I can hardly hear it.
“But it’s stopped.” My throat constricts around my protest. “My heart stopped breaking.”
He shakes his head and coughs. “Has it?”
It’s the first time since we entered the room thathehas askedmea question.
I’m not compelled to answer, but I know the truth.
My heart has broken more every time I’ve looked at him since. Not because I was reminded of my mother’s death. It was because I lost the keeper as a result of it.
How cruel that my grief at losing the man I thought he was will be the reason I will lose him now?
I whisper, answering honestly, “My heart kept breaking.”
As I speak, the façade the keeper wears peels away.
His green eyes, silver hair, and broken torso disappear to reveal the beautiful face he used to wear. The one that spoke to my fury and my darkness and brought me comfort.
He has the darkest blue eyes, like the sea that once churned in front of me. Black as night hair that reminds me of the panther’s fur, the mantle of a sleek beast. A lean and dangerous body and the voice of a predator.
This is the face he wore when he led me down to a beach for the first time and gave me the gift of the beautiful night sky. The face he wore when he burned the horizon with fierce lightning and told meIwas a beautiful darkness.
But with the change in his appearance, his wounds only worsen.
This is my price.
Knowing the cost of my heartbreak.
Cuts appear across his arms while crimson blood seeps through the black material now covering his legs, soaking through so badly that it’s impossible to ignore. Another gash appears on his face, this one across his jaw.
I remember when I asked him to take off his green-eyed form, and he told me he couldn’t, and I thought he was making a willful and defiant choice.
“I’m dying,” he says, and before I can process my shock, he lifts his left hand from his lap, his forefinger outstretched.
The black crown rests on it.
Oh, the number of times its power called to me and now he’s holding it out to me.
Offering it to me.
“This crown must be claimed,” he says. “Its power must be contained and controlled.”
But even as he extends his hand, a new fury rises within me. “That crown is keeping you alive. I’ve sensed it.”
I’ve also sensed the growingnothingnessaround him.
I’ve heard the awful silence, as if his heart had stopped beating and he had already ceased to exist.
“That crown is yours,” I say. “And you will keep it.”
His eyes are glassy, dull, and increasingly unfocused. “I can’t.” He pushes his hand toward me. “You must take it now.”
