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.

I’ll be forced to spend my days at her service but never at her side. In her shadow but never truly seen. 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’re not supposed to touch me at all.” “But you could command me to,” I drawl. “Then I’d simply be following an order.”

And when words finally spill from her lips, she might as well have plunged a dagger into my back like she promised so long ago. “Then I will marry you, Kitt. To save this kingdom from itself.”

The dress clings to her in a way I long to, eyes sweep over the crowd that I now desperately wish I was in.

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

“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.”

My voice trembles. Cracks. Crumbles with my composure. “But I can’t wait for another tragedy. So I’ll tell you now, because fate likely won’t allow us a future. Kai, I—” “I love you.” Kai steals the words from my mouth with a spreading smile. And, distantly, I realize this isn’t the first time he’s uttered such a declaration. He lifts a hand to my tear-stained face, stroking a thumb over the flushed skin there. “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.”