“The king did that to you?” I whispered at the exhausted sorrow spreading through us both.
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to.
“Why?” I asked.
His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me closer. Darcke’s chin brushed my forehead before he lifted it an inch, letting it rest atop my head.
You can’t tell me, can you?
Goose bumps peppered my skin. That had been something else.Hewas something else. And his mind was a very, very dark place.
“Yours isn’t all sunshine, either, heir.”
I know.
“We should go.” Darcke’s hands moved down to my own.
“Where?” I asked, a sense of despair sticking to my skin like cold sweat.
Something in my mind opened—memories rushing through like a river in spring when the ice melted. Darcke’s fingers tangled around mine when the clammy feeling spread across my skin, and my eyes shut even though I couldn’t see anything.
My reflection in the water looked back at us, the devastation so clear in my face it took my breath to relive it. “Please help me.” My broken whisper went through my chest, cracking my heart wide open again, throwing me back to that day.
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
Tears began dripping down my cheeks, and Viljan turned his back on me, giving me privacy.
“Obviously,” Darcke snarled.
“Please,stop,” I begged. “Please get out.”
“I’m trying,” he said through his teeth.
His fingers brushed the back of my hand, and it was like he dragged himself a step back even though he didn’t physically move. Then Darcke’s eyes closed in my mind.
I let out a shaking “Thank you” when the memory was released.
So sad,he thought.So alone.
“It’s not like your inner circle is a crowd,” I tried to quip to break through the anguish rolling back and forth between us.
Maybe that’s why we like each other.
I stiffened at the warmth in that thought. Where did that come from?
“Dowe like each other?” I whispered as Darcke started leading us through the darkness, walking slowly as bushes crept up our legs, their thorns ripping at our clothing. “And how do you know where to go?”
“Don’t read that much into it. I just meant that we haven’t killed each other yet,” Darcke replied. “And I don’t. I am guessingwe’re supposed to live out this lovely connection, and once it’s done, the end will reveal itself.”
A memory of an overgrown part of a forest, where rampant weeds wove up every tree and bushes covered every inch of the ground, slammed into me.
My brows furrowed. “Have you been here before?”
“Of course not,” Darcke replied.
Nothing within his mind contradicted his reply, not even when I listened closely. The terrifying pounding within Darcke’s head was gone, although there was still an echo of it, as if the magic had quelled everything but the small flame of pure will that it would never be able to quench within the warrior.
His mind was sharp now, and I swallowed before I spun around in the vast, strange space. There were tunnels in it—white halls leading away from the wall of memories locked up deep in the back.
