Fearless (The Powerless Trilogy, #3)

by Lauren Roberts

“And if we wish for our great kingdom to remain, we will welcome Ordinaries back into it.”

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’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 am the monster who hunted her down. I am the beast who delivered her to this doom. And I am afraid I’ll become so much worse when I’m no longer striving to deserve her.

Why couldn’t we have just stayed in that field of poppies?

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.

Because she was meant to be the death of me, not the life of another.

“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.”

Because what is worse than her dying is me being the one forced to kill her.

held in the arms of her Enforcer. And when she kisses me, long and fierce, I realize how happily I’d live the rest of my life at the end of a blade. So long as she is the one holding it.

He was my enemy then, and yet, we had never been closer.

It is cruel, not being able to call him mine after everything we’ve endured.

enough to never need proof of it. Perhaps in another life, I am brave enough to confess that I love him.

The absence of light is the absence of knowledge.

I would have stood at the edge of that desert until she walked back into my arms.

Perhaps the king really does know how tragically in love I am with his betrothed.

I calm my mind. Shut out my soft heart. And stain my soul once again.

With every step, I grow closer to becoming a queen. With every step, I grow closer to a united Ilya.

will her to walk through those doors. If not for this kingdom, then for me. I need her to come back to me. She is willingly my weakness, and yet, nothing has ever made me stronger.

I could fall to my knees, beg to be the only one worthy of witnessing her.

I’m breathless at the sight of her, doomed by the hope of having her. It’s a beautiful ruin, a devastating devotion. This girl holds my heart in her hands, could crush it between her fingers and still have me thanking her for the touch. And I hold her shoes.

Water is fickle, and man is foolish enough to think we can tame it.

“But when we are back in that palace, I will let you see just how much I hate that you are not mine.”

would never pass up the chance to stomp on your toes, Malakai.”

My name means nothing to me until she speaks it. Nothing until she claims it as her own.

I do this for her. Every dance. Every smile.

But out here, even surrounded by Elites, we are all at the mercy of the sea.

“It might just all be worth it if it means I can protect you.”

“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.”

“A king left his mark upon my heart, and now, I will leave mine across his kingdom.”

“I am Ordinary. Elite. A power of my choosing. And I will be your queen—all that I am and fiercely what I am not.”

She is a vision, something so ethereal in this moment that I may just believe there is a God. She is the closest thing to a deity.

When I thank the Plague, it is not for the power it has gifted me, but for the privilege of you.

My skin smells of her. My heart aches for her. The Enforcer bows to her. I’m off to find my queen.

I would have kneeled for her a hundred times over, not for duty but devotion.

A queen now stands where a thief once had—brave, benevolent, and brutal. She stands victorious.

Kitt slips that steel band free. And with the last of his dwindling strength, whispers, “Love each other for me.”

I call sorrow by its name and speak my own.

She is my dream. She is my piece of paradise. She is my inevitable.