Reckless (The Powerless Trilogy, #2)

by Lauren Roberts

I was alone—have been alone—left to clean up the mess that is my body, my brain, my bleeding heart.

“Do I haunt your dreams, plague your thoughts, like you do mine?”

“It’s a good thing you’re not here,” he says softly, a tone I never thought I’d hear from him again. “Because I still haven’t found my courage.”

I’d never given a second thought to what became of my soldiers’ bodies. And yet, here I am, hauling a man over my shoulder because of a girl who despises doling out death.

Her head whips in my direction with such fervency that I struggle to ignore the memory of how she used to relax at the sound of my voice. Her eyes drift from face to face. Searching. Frantic. Afraid.

It’s electric, this look, though not like it used to be. The invisible tether between us is now charged with our past, our present, our future—with everything we once were and everything we now are. It’s a hostile sort of harmony, both of us finally fully aware of what we are to each other—nothing. Just the shell of what was; what could have been.

I used to welcome the idea of drowning in those blue eyes of hers. But now, seeing the disdain she stares me down with, I realize that drowning alone w...

If she is Shadow, then I am Flame. This girl is the very thing I can’t seem to escape—can’t seem to go anywhere without the remnants of her following. Where I am, she is. Whether it’s in the flesh or in the fragments of my mind. And where there is a flame, there is always a shadow. She is my inevitable.

It’s exactly as it was. Neither of us changed, and yet, here we stand—strangers.

His face is jarring in the way that déjà vu can be, like seeing a figment of your imagination materialize outside your mind. I could barely see him atop the roof, draped in darkness. And that was dangerous. Dangerous to pretend that he was anything but the man who murdered my father. It was pathetic. It was a distraction. And I will never be so weak again. But I see him now for what he is to me—dead.

He’s horrifyingly exactly how I remember him.

Every piece of him perfectly in place, exactly how I’d left him. The sight of him so preserved, so seemingly the boy I came to care for, feels like a taunt. Like a mockery of every moment that amounted to nothing.

“As Ilya’s Enforcer and second to the king, she’s my property. Mine. Which means if anyone so much as lays a hand on her, you’ll learn firsthand just how brutal the Elites can be.”

Maybe the unknown is half the horror.

I knew you. Knew your past, your present—and your future that we were foolish enough to think I’d be a part of.

Because that’s exactly what it all was—a mistake. Every shred of ourselves shared in silent looks and whispered stories under willow trees only contributed to the slow death that was us.

“Aren’t you entitled for a criminal.” “And aren’t you righteous for being no better?”

It’s the first time he’s said my name, and some pathetic part of me would have liked to hear him say it again.

If shadows are her friend, then the moon may be her accomplice, with its silver rays streaming through her blood to stain the hair that masks her in moonlight.

If she fights for nothing, she lives for death. But if she burns for something, she lives for hope. I want her to fight me. I want her to burn for me, even if it means with hatred.

Her voice is distant, as though the words were intended to remain a thought. “I’m always injured. Always a little broken.”

I don’t need to know what keeps her up at night, what haunts her dreams, what has her trembling like this. Because knowing that involves knowing her.

She is the history I’m desperately trying not to repeat.

Does death divulge deep-rooted devotion? I can’t seem to differentiate grief out of love and guilt out of the lack thereof.

Yet, I can’t help but think that in another life, another time, another chance to choose each other—I would be in that bed beside her.

“What? You can’t handle hearing the truth?”

His touch is so gentle, so disguised with something akin to care. I swallow when his hands roam the sides of my thigh, silently reminding myself why I’m injured in the first place. Why I’m running in the first place. Why I’m so broken in the first place.

“He is gone, and I don’t even know how to breathe if he does not command me to do so. Command me to eat. To live.”

That wasn’t care or concern or anything close to kindness. No, it was possession. The threat was territorial. I am his prey, his prize, his prisoner. His and his alone. I hate it. Hate that I belong to him.

It’s a struggle not to mourn how easy getting close to him used to be, and how desperately I crave something not completely complicated.

And yet, my cheeks are heating in the middle of a sunless desert. And I hate it—hate him. Right?

I think so often of you. Which is why I know exactly what you would do.”

One selfish moment of my miserable existence committed to her. To a girl in the arms of a boy. To a facade.

“But I do know I deserve to live either way.”

She looks at me, shocked. And then she smiles, bright and big like the night sky hanging above us. I fear she could rival the stars.

“Don’t live to die. Die because you lived.” A pause. “Or something like that. Listen, you’ve earned every breath. So enjoy it.”

His mother is dying, and he was sent on a mission to retrieve me. A mission that is now taking far longer than anyone expected. Did he say goodbye to her before he left? Did he make a promise he now cannot keep? Did he—

everything about her is a bold sort of beauty, like a rose proudly displaying its thorns. She’s alluring in the way that most deadly things are. It’s captivating.

And I regret not being what I’m supposed to be.” He strokes a thumb across my wet cheek. “I’m sorry you have to be anything at all.”

“I’m brave enough to admit that I’m terrified,”

Nothing has changed between us, and yet, nothing will ever be the same again.

The pathetic are punished.