Page 31

Paris struggled, his words cut off by a horrible gargling.

“I’ll make this stop,” I soothed pathetically, his blood seeping through my fingers, all hot and mortal. “You can’t die. You can’t die.”

“Only, he can now that the perpetrator of the curse is dead,” Aidan cut in, speaking with strange sympathy.

Liar. Paris wouldn’t die. Not now, not ever, if I could help it. He was my beautiful gift, the type of man I needed in every lonely day spent counting down the hours until sunset. He splashed color across my world.

As many lovers as I’d had in my long life, and as much as Aidan had hurt me, I wanted to be loved beyond my royal status. To feel the touch of someone who truly wanted me and who I wanted back.

And now… What? He was leaving?

His cornflower-blue eyes began to lose their luster.

“Paris,” I breathed, a million possibilities trying to pierce through this horror, possibilities of a future that would never be.

“I would say consider yourself lucky to have escaped the knife,” Aidan added. “However, your end will be coming. My power will return to its fullest glory without the chains of the elf now. You’re slippery, Silvanus, but I know I can get you easily without this protection around you. No more elaborate schemes using the frostbrood. Just a simple plan to snuff you out.”

I ignored him, watching Paris’s light fade.

“I’m sorry for everything,” I whispered, his coral-pink complexion becoming deathly pale as he bled to death. “I’m sorry this knife found us. I’m sorry I ruined your life. I’m sorry fate shackled you to me.”

My goodness, the aching, the longing for him. It burned worse than the persistent magic still attacking my chest. A million razors slicing me apart, an emptiness waiting to entangle me in an eternal loop of agony.

A final glint of life in those lovely eyes, and Paris drew his last breath.

Aidan rejoiced.

I fell forward, pressing my forehead to the elf’s. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Grief drove spears of ice into me. I never wanted to move from this spot, to be anywhere else but by his side. If I didn’t move, he would always be pressed against me, always here, not dead but real and solid and breathing the same air as me.

“It begins!” Aidan bellowed, his feet stomping as if he was dancing.

Curse him. Curse everything. I’d rip his heart out when the time came for me to move.

Never. I’m never moving. I’m never letting go.

Cackling, dancing, hollering. The bastard’s joy was a rotten sound. “My power will be beyond measure. My power will⁠—”

The world skipped, a strange wobble around me. Paris’s body vanished, reappearing beside me, sitting upright, drenched in sweat and panting.

Alive. Breathing. Still here.

“I’m back again,” he rasped. “The curse… Whoa.”

Relief spun me into a cocoon of joy, allowing me to relish in this miracle.

“Paris?”

“Yeah. I’m… It didn’t work.” He cleared his throat. “Killing Marie didn’t work.”

I heard Aidan draw in a sharp breath.

I looked at him, his eyes twitching. “It failed?”

“Uh-huh,” Paris returned. “Still alive and always ready to kick your face in.”

“It. Failed.”