Fearless (The Powerless Trilogy, #3)

by Lauren Roberts

I thought I’d known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin. I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing. A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It’s not as though she hadn’t promised to be my ruin, hadn’t already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me.

In love with a girl I’d have bowed to long before she became my queen.

I’ve been nothing but willing when it comes to drowning in those ocean eyes. But now, I can’t fathom drowning if she is not the anchor I’m sinking with.

I would spend the rest of my days making her flower crowns if she wanted to be a queen. My queen. Not Kitt’s. Not Ilya’s. Mine.

“You seem to forget that I’m completely powerless, Prince.” Her words hold an edge, as though her breath has become a blade she drags along my neck. “So be my weakness, then.”

I can hear the weak smile beginning to creep into her voice. “You’re not supposed to touch me at all.” “But you could command me to,” I drawl. “Then I’d simply be following an order.” Her laugh is breathy, and I memorize the sound.

“I can’t seem to die, can I?” I wipe a loose tear from my eye. “What was it you called me?” I can see the exact moment recognition lights his face. “A cockroach,” he chuckles, head shaking. “You’re a damn cockroach, Princess.”

“So bow at my feet with a sneer, if you must. I won’t see it with your face to the ground.”

The one person meant to be my undoing saved me from it.

“Pae.” His voice is ragged. “I would lose my life for you before finding something else worth living for.” His fingers weave into my hair, slide along the back of my neck. “You are my inevitable. In life and in death.”

I strain for salvation. Beg for life. Beg to live it with her.

“Paedyn, I love you. Like nothing else before, I love you. And I’ve been waiting to tell you since I realized your eyes are my favorite color and your freckles the only constellation worth looking at. I could lie—say that you’ve stolen my every thought and heartbeat like the thief you are, but all of me was already yours. Pae, you are my inevitable.”