Fearless (The Powerless Trilogy, #3)

by Lauren Roberts

There are very few reasons for a meeting between two cloaked figures in the dead of night. Unsurprisingly, the list is as short as it is unseemly. For some, it is love. For most, it is lust. Lust for money. Lust for purpose. Lust for revenge. But in some cases, it is love that first spurs these lusts. Or rather, the loss of it. Though these odd contradictories are rare, they are consistently tragic.

Damn the pretending. Damn the hiding. Damn everything but him and us and this moment where I need him.

His fingers graze my forehead, sweeping away the sticky strands of hair there. “I heard you scream. And nothing… nothing has terrified me more.” I hear him swallow. Feel a swipe of his thumb across my cheekbone. “And it didn’t stop. You just kept screaming. So…” A pause. “We both know it will take more than a locked door to keep me from you.”

I give him a look. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” “It’s not promises I care to keep—it’s you.”

I turn, shielding my eyes, to see a familiar figure watching me from the edge of the city. Now, the Enforcer is something far more devastating than a lover, yet we have never been further apart. Keeping my distance from him is a Trial of its own. It is cruel, not being able to call him mine after everything we’ve endured. Perhaps in another life, I am strong enough to never need proof of it. Perhaps in another life, I am brave enough to confess that I love him. Perhaps in another life, I learn to love him from afar. And that is the most fearless thing of them all.

I’m suddenly standing before the king and his Enforcer. Kitt and Kai. Betrothed and regrettably not betrothed.

So he looks away. He turns. He strides from the throne room. And I can feel myself beginning to drift without him to anchor me.

My pace is even, hopes oddly high for one who may be sailing to their death. But I am no stranger to drowning. I’ve been doing just that since the day I looked into her ocean eyes.