Reckless (The Powerless Trilogy, #2)

by Lauren Roberts

She kisses me hard, biting my lip to draw blood like the dagger she still presses against me. I tighten my grip on her other wrist still clutching the small knife, hard enough to have her palm o...

With her hand now free, I lift it over my shoulder, guiding...

Her fingers are buried in my hair while mine di...

Five years ago, it was her father who was my first kill.

The room. I nearly stumble when the realization crashes into me. Her house. The one I burnt to the ground. That room I was standing in…

It was me. I killed her father— Movement has my head jerking toward the shifting shadows.

“Terrible accident,” I cut in with a sad shake of my head. “You don’t wanna see what’s under there.”

“I’m going to kill you.” She’s ripped the scarf from her face, huffing at the hair falling around it in a heap.

“Are you, now?” I muse. “You had trouble with that even before you were injured.”

“By all means, please bloody the bed I’ll be sleeping in.” She barely spares me a glance. “And what makes you so sure that you’ll be sleeping in this bed?”

“What makes you think I won’t be?” Ignoring me, she begins gingerly examining the wound on her thigh, completely content to disregard my existence.

“Come here.” “I’m good, thanks,” she says blandly.

She stares unseeingly at the blood coating her fingers, swallowing hard at the sight, shaking with each shallow breath.

Something is very wrong with the Silver Savior. And I’m not supposed to care. I’ve seen trauma take on worse forms.

Trauma and I are well acquainted....

She blinks, her voice cracking as she begins, “I… I can’t…” “I don’t need to know,” I cut in quietly. Because I don’t. I don’t need to know what keeps her up at night, what haunts her dreams, what has her trembling like this.

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

“You didn’t know who you killed that night?” I bite back my bitter laugh. “I didn’t even know I would be killing anyone that night. Didn’t know my fate was starting so soon.”

“He didn’t tell you why you were killing him?”

“For the first three years of my missions, I was given no information on who I was killing. He’d call it blind obedience. Told me that the Enforcer didn’t need to know anything more. That the king’s commands are never to be questioned.”

The thought of thanking her for driving a sword through my father’s chest may be the cruelest thing I’ve ever considered.

Does death divulge deep-rooted devotion?

I can’t seem to differentiate grief out of love and guilt out of the lack thereof.

“Can I turn around now?” I ask with a sigh when the bed creaks behind me. “Shh, I’m trying to sleep.”

With arms and legs stretched wide, she attempts to take up as much of the bed as possible. The sight is so unexpected that I nearly choke on a laugh.

“Sorry,” she says, her eyes closed and lips crooked. “There’s no more room on the bed.”

With that, I’m banished to the hard floor beside her bed.

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.

This is the third and supposedly final warning he’s willing to give me.

Sleeping so soundly is scary when it’s beside someone so willing to stab you in the back.

“You know,” she says with that familiar edge in her voice, “I do think your window is broken, actually.”

“Well, food always seems to be falling from it.”

“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.”

My hands are shaking. Papers slide from their sloppy piles while unshed tears burn my tired eyes.

She stands, sucking in a breath. “Let me help you fix the window. Please. It doesn’t have to stay broken.” I look at her then. Let her look at me. It’s only when she’s examined every crack in my calm facade that I say, “I’m afraid it’s beyond repair.”

poor kitt