Fearless (The Powerless Trilogy, #3)

by Lauren Roberts

For those fearless enough to follow their heart

For some, it is love. For most, it is lust. Lust for money. Lust for purpose. Lust for revenge.

in some cases, it is love that first spurs these lusts. Or rather, the loss of it.

He has the practiced ability to spin words into something far prettier than the meaning behind them.

“Every brutal act is born of love.”

Even hooded and shrouded in shadows, these two strangers have never felt so seen.

Her face is streaked with dirt, eyes haunted by a future she hasn’t yet seen and never thought she would.

She is shambles. She is haunted. She is to be a bride.

that can’t be true. I took his everything from him. And he is going to kill me for it. He has to.

death is the fate I’ve been preparing for my whole life—the

feel it on the stained fingertips that will forever drip with the blood of others, in the O carved atop my sputtering heart to brand me a weakness.

Death is the only constant in my life, like an old friend who hones every one of my dark secrets into a weapon. He calls me weak and all I hear is Ordinary. He calls me doomed and all I hear is an earnest promise. His is the hand my bloo...

He might as well have called me a traitor. A murderer. An Ordinary weakening our Elite kingdom.

“You are to be my bride.”

I killed the man I once saw reflected in his son’s green gaze.

Edric Azer haunts me only in the fragments of my mind and the matching broken heart he carved into. I made sure of that.

I still cannot bring myself to look ...

There is betrayal. There is hurt. And history is not easily forgotten by the kings who write it.

Green. Just as they were, and just as they always will be. He looks at me, and I look at him. A criminal without a father, and a son forever trying to please his. Just as we were, and just as we always will be.

for the first time since that battle in the Bowl, we truly see each other.

I am a Psychic who is nothing of the sort. An Ordinary who somehow survived their Purging Trials, committed treason, killed their king, and is still standing here before them, alive against all odds.

That is when I hear Death’s whisper echoing from the darkest corner of my mind. The part of me that had accepted my imminent doom the moment I learned what it meant to be powerless in this kingdom.

this fate may prove to be worse than ...

These are not the eyes I search for in every crowd. Not the eyes that rake over me with a reverence I revel in. Not the eyes that have counted every freckle dotting my nose, every shiver of my body.

He is to blame for every drop of my tainted blood marring this marble floor.

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

he’s nowhere to be found. And for the first time since stealing those silvers from him on Loot Alley, I feel utterly alone.

So fucking sad

separates a traitor from a future queen.

When my gaze flicks up to the king, he offers a single reassuring nod. But the look he wears is laced with a reminder—I have no say in any of this.

I am nothing more than their Ordinary entertainment, their example of weakness. I’ve been put on a pedestal to be poked and prodded, degraded and shamed.

My knees threaten to buckle, but Kitt holds me upright. It’s as though he suspected as much and grabbed my hand, if only to keep me from collapsing at his words.

I hear nothing, see nothing, know nothing but this moment and the hope for every one after.

My whole life has been spent in the slums, crowded and hungry.

“If we do not open up our borders, and allow Ordinaries to live among us once again, this Elite kingdom will fall.”

Warmth begins to pool in my chest, feeling so foreign I almost don’t recognize it to be hope.

I feel hazy, numb to the fate set before me.

My home, a place where I no longer needed to pretend to be something I wasn’t in order to stay alive.

That is when his gaze softens, and I see myself reflected in it. Every fear, every bit of unease. He wears all of it and more. Because that ring in his shaking hand represents everything he was taught to hate.

It is my turn to become the difference I always dreamed of being, even if the king’s reasonings do not resemble my own.

I am the sacrifice that Ordinaries have bled and died for.

I am the power they lack.

I thought I’d known torment until it wrapped around her finger.

I feel so fucking bad for kai

I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing.

It’s not as though she hadn’t promised to be my ruin, hadn’t already become my demise.

I watch Paedyn through the gaps of a gawking crowd, just as I will for the rest of my life. 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.

Omg

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.

this was the last decree I ever thought would form on Kitt’s lips. And he hadn’t even bothered to inform me of it.

Anger is too dangerous an emotion to let myself feel. It dulls my senses and heightens my Wielder ability until all I know is the power pulsing beneath my skin.

I have no one to blame but myself. I did this to her, to us, to each moment I spent hoping she would be the center of every one to follow.

No

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.