The crown is painfully heavy, squeezing my skull too tight. I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that centuries of hidden truths—of outrightlies—are perched pretty atop my head.
I’m struggling to breathe, and Stark is still just kneeling there, slowly looking up at me.
“The Bonded have?—”
“Stand up,” I choke out. “Fuck.”
He rises smoothly to his full height, towering over me. A flare of heat lashes over me again, which I quickly douse with a bucket of ice-water.
That memory. The deaths.
Stark’s dark eyes dart briefly over the crown on my head, down to my hand on the bars, then meet mine. “The Bonded have been under a Siphon blood curse for five hundred years.”He gestures to the crown with a distractingly scarred hand. “That crown and the sword, together, control the human bonds to the direwolves.”
I think back to the arena, to that lurking urge in my pack’s minds to kill each other.
“We didn’t know what happened to the crown, but it makes sense that it was hidden in the arena—the more direwolf and Bonded blood spilled on it, the stronger the king’s control became,” he says.
“Blood magic,” I repeat numbly, my mind whirling through this new information. “A bloodcurse. What are you talking about?”
Stark’s brows pinch briefly, but he takes a deep breath and speaks in a calm, distractingly rumbling voice. “The Siphon who overthrew the rightful royal family used powerful blood magic to bind the public’s memories of the Sturmfrost royals. No one was permitted to speak of them again, and within a generation, they were forgotten,” he tells me. “By everyone except for my family. As you know, we are the sworn protectors of the royal line.”
I almost burst into delirious laughter at that. I’m not insane, but Stark is definitely doing his best to nudge me in that direction.
All of this time.Myprotector, not Killian’s, not the king’s.
“My ancestor smuggled your ancestor out of the castle when she was a baby and hid her with a commoner human family,” he continues. “She also hid the history book you found in my quarters. My family has been faithfully passing that book down across generations. We’ve kept the truth alive through reading, even with a curse sealing it away.”
Realization finally dawns on me. “You literallycouldn’tspeak about it. Is that why I had to give Anassa a ‘direct order’ to get the crown?”
“Yes,” he says stiffly, then presses his lips tightly together in obvious frustration. It isn’t directed towards me, though. “I was raised on the stories—alwayswritten, never spoken—about the Sturmfrost line. About the day the rightful royal would return. I?—”
He cuts himself off and shifts his weight. His stare burns into me.
“We’ve been waiting for the day a Sturmfrost royal might become Bonded again.”
I swallow, ignoring the slight tingling on my lips and how badly I want to know what he’d been about to say. I force myself to take a step back and reallyhearwhat he’s telling me. And through it all, one thing in particular doesn’t make any fucking sense.
Shaking my head, I clutch the bars tighter. “If you’re my…” Notmy, he’s not mine. “If you’re my family’s protector, why have you been trying tokillme since the moment I got here?”
Instantly, his expression twists with rage. Menacing energy explodes from him. It’s that intense, overpowering presence he embodies when we spar, when he kills, when he goes towar.
“Killyou?” he exclaims, then glances over his shoulder toward the entrance of the dungeon and lowers his voice. “I’ve been doing everything in my power to keep you safe!”
My cheeks are on fire. “Wh?—”
“Who moved you to your own quarters when someone tried to kill you in the night? Me!” He thuds a fist against his chest. “Who has been training you and strengthening you at every turn? Me!”
Hemoved me to my own quarters? I cannot believe Killian took credit for that… although, of course I can.
“What about that night, after the Voice Trial?” I ask. “Youthreatenedme. Talked about accidents and?—”
He groans. “You weredrunk. Not long after you’d been attacked. It was an attempt to warn you off getting even drunker.”
Oh. I… “You were constantly trying to kill me in training!” I exclaim.
“I did not order asinglehit I knew you couldn’t take,” he says, stepping closer to the bars. I can feel his heat, his breath. He’s angry, but he’s looking at me like he wants to— “Andconstantlyis a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”
I step back because staying this close to him is messing with my head. “I know what I saw, Stark. From the start, you’vehatedme. You?—”
