Yes, I do. I deserve to burn for what I did to Mae and her family. I deserve to burn for all the sickening, miserable, foul things I’ve done to get here.
“In a few days, there will be a ball. If we can slip away, I can funnel you out of here.”
“Why can’t you funnel me out of here now?” she asks, looking around pointedly at the privacy we have.
I shake my head. “There are too many guards, too many little spies for Cora all around this place.”
She narrows her gaze. “What’s your plan, then?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out. Do you trust me?”
The question hangs between us.
“Not at all,” she says.
Silence blossoms between us once more.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” I blurt. She stares at me like I’ve grown antlers. “You need to eat if this is going to work.”
Elle claps her hands together and smiles, but it’s faux-saccharine and full of loathing. “Do I get to choose this time? Or are you going to take control of my body and make me walk and talk like your little puppet?”
My cheeks warm as shame floods me for the first time in a long, long time. “It’s your choice,” I manage to whisper.
“Oh, wonderful. I would rather choke on every piece of food for the rest of my life than eat dinner with you,” she fires back.
I shrug, the act of nonchalance one that I’m well versed in.
“What are you going to do about them?” she asks, hand gesturing flippantly to the dead guards.
Great question. “I’ll handle it.” I look down at her, at her hair, still soaking wet, at the goosebumps that line every inch of her skin. Her sodden clothes cling to every curve. I tear my gaze away. “You need to get inside.”
She scoffs. “It’s so funny that you all of a sudden act like you care. It doesn’t matter what you say, High King,” she spits. “There is no heart that beats in your chest.”
If that’s true, then why does it beat in tandem with yours?
Chapter 40
MAE
“How many timesam I going to fail at this before we accept I can’t do this?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Depends on how many times you’re going to make disparaging comments about yourself,” Asmo retorts as I pace back and forth in the training room.
I huff a sigh. “We’ve been at this for almost an hour and I’m no closer to shifting.”
“Then you’re doing something wrong,” he says maddeningly calmly, as if I’m not about to pull my hair out.
I come to a stop, crossing my arms and facing him. “Or you’re teaching me wrong,” I say with a glare. “Or, like I said,I can’t shift.”
His jaw clenches, his first and only sign of annoyance. “You can funnel, so you can shift. But if you keep believing you can’t shift, then you won’t. I told you, you have to imagine yourself in your shifted body and will it.”
“I don’t even know what my animal form is,” I fire back for the fifth time today. We’ve been having different versions of the same argument for the last hour.
“You don’t have to know,” he says, also for the fifth time.
“It’s probably like…a mouse,” I say as I throw my hands up.
One corner of his mouth twitches upward. He strides toward me. “It would be the most beautiful mouse I’ve ever seen.” He pulls me to him, and the tightness in my chest recedes. “But, again, you know that’s not true.” He reaches for my antlers. My back arches at his soft caress, nerve endings lighting at his touch. My buzz dims as I remember the last male who touched me in this way. Marik.
