If I’d never become Bonded, the Sturmfrost Queens would have remained a secret. Maybe for another five hundred years.
So I suppose I have one thing to thank him for.
Stark watches me intently, a violent storm playing across his features. Once, that image would have scared me. Now, it sends a shiver down my spine for wholly different reasons.
He reaches through the bars and grabs my wrist, the contact alighting my blood. “Give me the word and I’ll tear out his throat. All the lives I’ve ever taken were just training for this moment, my queen. Make me your instrument of vengeance. Let my hands act out your every savage, depraved thought. Use me. I’m yours.”
Mine.Mypsycho asshole.Mybloodthirsty killer.
My face feels hot and strange, and I realize from somewhere outside of myself that I’m crying, the tears streaking rivers down my cheeks.
Out of everything,thisis the thing that makes me cry?
Maybe I’m going insane after all. I laugh at the thought and brush the tears away in a fast sweep.
“Thank you,” I say through the tightness in my throat. “But this… this is my score to settle, and no one else’s. Besides, I have some questions for our supposed prince, and we need those answered before either one of us can find inventive ways to disembowel him.”
Stark gently lets go of my wrist and I feel the loss of contact keenly. “You need to go to him, then?”
I nod, and take the crown off my head. “I do. He’s done such an impeccable job of pretending to be what I wanted. It’s time to return the favor.”
The crown is heavy in my hands and when I give it back to Stark, it’s like my very blood protests. There’s an instinct in me to snatch it back. But I push past it. “Keep it safe. Find Saela and the other kids. Venna can help you there. I’m going to need you to come meet me with the crown, but I’ll send word through Anassa when it’s time.”
Stark nods, his dark hair falling forward into his eyes. When he finally looks back up at me, there’s an edge of something foreign in his gaze.Concern, I realize with a start. How unusual.
“I’d tell you not to put yourself in danger,” he says, “but I know you better than that.”
I bite my lip, suddenly self-conscious. “You’re worried?”
He scoffs. “Never. You are the danger. Any person who doesn’t see that deserves what’s coming to them.”
Fuck, those stupid tears are back.
For some reason, I believe him without a shadow of a doubt, even though those words are coming from the mouth of a man I once thought was my greatest enemy.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Stark waits for Venna to come and signal that the way is clear again, and then they depart. He’s promised to have Saela waiting for me when I’m done with Killian.
My heart bleeds at the thought of delaying my reunion with Saela, of trusting anyone else with her rescue, even Stark. But I know she won’t be safe until I deal with Killian’s threat.
After they leave, I give it twenty or thirty minutes—time is passing strangely down here—pacing around the dark cell before I finally call for the guards.
The two men who come look repulsed by me. Who can blame them? I’m covered in the dried blood of their king.
“Please,” I say, getting on my knees before them in the cell, and trying my very best to look weak. “Please, get Prince Killian for me. He was right. My mind is unwell. I need him, I need his help. He loves me and he’ll fix me. Prince Killian will know what to do.”
“King Killian,” one of them corrects me curtly.
“King Killian,” I agree, though the words barely make it out of my throat. “Please.”
The guards look at each other warily and then leave without saying another word.
But my pleas must have worked, because a short while later, they come back and let me out of the cell. Then they escort me roughly up the stairs, up and up and up, through passageways until we finally reach the hall outside Killian’s room.
I assumed he would come to me, but of course he wants me here, where he can entirely have the upper hand.
The guards open the door to his room and then shove me in. “Don’t try anything funny,” the second one growls at me. “We’ll be right outside the door.” Then he slams said door in my face.
