I bow my head, the glimmer of hope within me extinguished, and turn to leave, feeling the cold stares of the courtiers following my every step.
I suddenly realize Ryker didn’t offer me his hand with the ring. Perhaps he no longer wants my lips to touch him in any way, though I’d obviously keep my cursed hands to myself.
Perhaps I no longer deserve it.
The gloom is replacedby the glaring, almost disorienting brilliance of midday as I leave the shadowed confines of the temple.
Kaelzar and I prowl the sunlit streets, and people dart away from us. The coachmen, usually eager for work, do their best to ignore us, steering their carriages off as soon as I move to approach them.
My aching feet protest each step, yet I force myself forward, one determined stride at a time. I remind myself that the worst part of the day is behind me.
Now all I have to do is move. One step, then another, until I reach my bed. I almost expect the guards to stop me, to tell me I’m not allowed to return to the palace. But no one does.
I guess, as Calista’s Champion and not just another Crimson Tether cursed, I’m allowed to keep my illusions of home.
Kaelzar is a dark, powerful presence looming at my back. He brims with seething, pulsating frustration that I’m too exhausted to acknowledge until another coachman hurries his horses to speed up as I try to approach.
I whirl around, annoyance finally reaching its tipping point. “Can you take off your hood?” I snap. “You’re scaring the populace.”
He is indeed extremely intimidating, his menacing silence brokenonly by the clicking of his shifting chains and his unnatural stillness. His cloak oozes tendrils of shadow, as if drenched in darkness, and his hood is a shroud that hides his face completely.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, Kaelzar lifts his hands to lower the hood. As the fabric falls away, his face is revealed in the bright light—a visage chiseled from stone, with piercing gray, almost silver eyes. The shadows around the streets deepen as if drawn to him.
People around us visibly recoil from the slithering darkness at our feet. Gasps and murmurs of fear ripple through the crowd.
I see the terror in their eyes, the way they clutch their loved ones and hurry away.
“Better?” he asks, his voice a low, rumbling growl that reverberates through the air.
I take a deep breath, forcing myself to remain steady. “Better,” I lie, wondering if his presence will always be a source of fear and unease, no matter how much of his face is visible.
He stares at me, pinning me with those ice-cold eyes. “Never call me yours again,” he says, as if nothing is more offensive than being associated with me.
His words are the final cut in a day already filled with too many wounds—a last, sharp blow when I have nothing left to give.
Each setback has piled on, each humiliation heavier than the last, until his rejection lands as the cruelest of all. I’ve endured so much, clinging to the hope that he, at least, might offer some sliver of solidarity. Some fragments of understanding.
After all, he is my Godbeast sent to help me. But instead, his words land like salt sprinkled over the raw, bleeding wounds of my heart. And I feel like the final thread of my resilience snaps, leaving me exposed, defeated, and utterly alone.
That’s when I catch my reflection in a nearby shop’s glass.
The dark lines Eva had so carefully painted over my eyes are now smudged, making me look like a raccoon that has just crawled through a thicket of thorny bushes.
And that bright, unmistakable red streak of hair is on full display, now that the water washed away the rings Eva put in my hair, brandingme as a threat, an outcast. No wonder not even one coachman is willing to talk to me. It isn’t him that scares them away.
It’s me.
In that fleeting glimpse, I see not just a stranger, but the price of daring to defy gods.
I laugh through sudden tears, unsure if it’s mirth or despair. My ribs constrict as I stumble into a dark alley, collapsing against the cool brick, each ragged breath echoing my solitude.
I realize I’m no longer laughing when my chest begins to hurt and I feel snot and tears mingling under my palms.
What was I thinking? It’s luck—pure luck—that I survived the first Challenge. And what does it change? Ryker won’t let me kiss his ring because he thinks I’ll decay him. Not because he forgot or deemed it beneath me as his future queen. He simply thinks my touch is deadly.
And the worst part is… he’s right.
The images of the rotted bodies in the temple burst into my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut, but that does nothing to erase them. There was no sign of the carnage when we reappeared, as if the entire horrific accident had never happened.
