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Damn the pretending. Damn the hiding. Damn everything but him and us and this moment where I need him.
“And if we wish for our great kingdom to remain, we will welcome Ordinaries back into it.”
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 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.”
see now that it was obsession because love was not an emotion Father taught me.
“I heard you.” My hands cup her face. “I did. I do. And if you want me to tell you the sheer extent of my jealousy, then I will. But I’d rather not waste what little time we have together talking about my brother. Especially while I sit on your bed and try to stop myself from doing something rash with my future queen.” My eyes flick between her wide ones. “But when we are back in that palace, I will let you see just how much I hate that you are not mine.”
“It’s just a silly story.” I watch her for a long moment, though she avoids my gaze. “And the other books?” “Mostly magic and worlds I wanted to escape to.” She sounds oddly bashful. “Worlds where I might have fit in.”
“Should I hold your shoes now, or wait for you to lose them?”
So I spin her in the moonlight. Smile when she laughs at my expense. And let her step on my toes.
And that is the only answer he offers before extending a hand to me. “Now, put me to work. These books need to dry before you read one to me tonight.”
“My pretty, pretty Pae.” She laughs breathlessly. “Stay with me.” I press my forehead to her own. “Stay with me. Stay with me.”
“Thank you.” I cut him a glance. “That wasn’t a compliment.” “Then don’t say my name, and I won’t thank you for the sound.”
“I want to hide with you beneath the willow tree. You are the secret I will spend the rest of my life keeping.” Her voice quivers beneath the weight of such a promise. “Us.”
Every beast can be defeated. A creature. A Trial. A king.
“Enlighten me,” I challenge. “Because you love her!” The rough admittance seems to startle even him. I stare at Kitt, chest heaving and sword hanging at my side. He clears his throat. “Perhaps more than anything.”
Now, please entertain me, darling. I’m bored. What am I to do if not count your freckles? Your Cocky Bastard
You think I would not beg to run away with you? My duty may be to the king, but my heart, Pae, is wherever you are. It is in the palm of your hands, the pad of your thumb. So if you leave, I will follow. If you stay, I will bow. Because there has never been a moment when you did not own the only piece of me that mattered—loving you made me matter. And I ache to be full again.
“I know, love.”
This is not an opponent. This is the boy who braids back my hair and dances for the both of us. The boy who would chase me to the ends of the earth if it meant he could hold me one more time. This is a man who would bury another for me—would bury himself, if only I asked. He is a fool for me. He is my fool.
The sun is blotted out behind his threatening figure, though its rays comb through that wavy hair like a halo. As though I’m staring at the angel of death.
“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.”
“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.”
I feel delicate in his embrace, as though he is holding something priceless. Love. That is what this feeling is. And it is all-consuming.
“A king left his mark upon my heart, and now, I will leave mine across his kingdom.”
And tonight, he is mine.
Pae sits at the end of the blanket, light dappling her smooth skin. Shadows of willow leaves paint her body, ever shifting in the slight breeze. 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.
You, Pae, are my inevitable. (I love you.)
He is a poet. A fool. A man writing his final goodbye.
Paedyn rivaled me, the stars, the very sea with her gaze.
She is not only my weakness—she is my everything.
“What do you want, cocky bastard?” “You forgot the ‘my’ in front of that endearing nickname.”
“Love each other for me.”
If Kitt and Kai had endured their loveless lives for something truly great, it might have been worth it all.
Kitt Azer was at war with himself, the pen his weapon and the parchment his foe. The battle that raged behind his eyes was one he fought alone until the very end.
Father has done this to me. It is because of him that I am this way. Obsessive. Controlling. In constant need of approval. My mind is not my own—maybe it never was.
He wouldn’t let me touch the sponge. The fearsome Enforcer of Ilya swiped every speck of his brother’s blood from my skin. It was the gentleness with which he loved, even when he grieved, that made me break. We held each other, weeping for a brother, a broken boy, a loss to the world. Our bodies shook, tears rolling down the shoulders we clung to.
Kitt, even in death, was to remain the kind king he was always meant to be.
“Good.” His nose brushed mine. “I want you to grow so used to my gratitude that you’re sick of it.”
“Your promises are not broken. They are just awaiting you.”
“And what is there to enjoy in losing, Malakai?” “That.” His dimples steal my breath away. “Your company. Your taunting. Your lips forming my name.”
“You’re the king of Ilya.” “And what am I to you?” I tip her chin up so I can watch the words form on her lips. “My fool.”
My knee meets the cobblestone, and her mouth opens in a gasp. “Marry me, Pae. I’m already on one knee, but I’ll get down on both and beg for you, if you like.”
“Good. I quite like the sight of you beneath me.”
Tears sting my eyes for the bittersweetness of this moment. Paedyn Gray is finally mine. But only because my brother is no longer here. “We will love for him,” she whispers in my ear. A tear slips down my cheek. “You and me.”
She walks toward me, looking like a dream I wish to never wake from.
Time slows long enough to let me bask in a moment I’ve only ever dreamt of. She is my dream. She is my piece of paradise. She is my inevitable.
This is the gathering of loved ones, and the spirits of those left behind. This is a union of souls that ache to be stitched together.
When she stops before me, I nearly fall to my knees. I am forever awed by the mere presence of her.
