Fearless (The Powerless Trilogy, #3)

by Lauren Roberts

I see a life of torture beside the man I love. My husband sits on the throne, but he is not who holds my heart. No, that man stands to my left, never looking in my direction.

This makes me feel better, having a piece of my father with me on my wedding day.

There was once a time when I would have done unspeakable things to steal even a single gem. Now, I get to wear them around my neck like a trophy.

I’ve never looked into the face of a ghost, but I imagine this is what it would feel like.

I stare at the woman. She stares up at me.

I take a shuddering breath before lifting the photograph in front of my face. Her nose is dusted with freckles. I stare at the queen. She stares up at one.

This is absurdity. That is what I tell myself, over and over again. This is a coincidence, a picture that shares a slight resemblance. I am no royal. I am no daughter of a queen.

My trust in Calum had built a wall around my heart, yet all it took was a rose to have it crumbling.

Everything is happening so fast, like the inevitable trip before a fall.

A Fatal. A Resistance leader. A man who is always in the right place at the right time.

The notes. The handwriting. The Purging Trials.

Blooms did not spring flowers from the earth for Calum overnight. No, he has been tending to them for years.

I don’t look up at him. It’s the queen who holds my gaze now.

Father—my real father—taught me to trust my instincts. Never falter. Never leave anything unnoticed.

“Do you still think I look like my mother?”

“I thought it was odd when you mentioned that I looked like her from the pictures you had seen,” I say slowly. “See, we didn’t have any photos of my father’s wife, Alice.”

“But Alice was not the mother you were talking about,” I breathe. “It was the queen you loved. The one who died giving birth to me.”

“So I’ll ask you again,” I say, deceptively calm. “Do I look like my mother?”

So when I send the words to the forefront of my mind, I mirror the shadow of a smile that lifts his lips. Hello, Father.

OH MY FUCKING GOD

This man was once like a father to me, and now that I’ve discovered he has been precisely that all along, hurt rams into me.

“You were an embarrassment to the king, one he told me to take care of. And he spent his life covering up the Ordinary he thought was his. But you were mine, and Iris died”—he runs a hand over his hair—“all for you to be nothing! A worthless Ordinary!”

The king thought I was his daughter.

Two Elites have never made an Ordinary. Yet, here I stand, powerless.

that is why you hate me?” I choke out. “Because the woman you loved died giving birth to me?”

“Because it should have been you,”

I may not have been able to kill you like the king had wished eighteen years ago, but I hoped you met your end in the slums.”

I’m suddenly flung into another memory, one where I am bloody and broken and barely surviving against the king. His boot is crushing my chest as I stare up at him, rain pelting my stinging face.

“It was all a ploy.” My chest heaves, anger swelling within it. “Everything. You don’t care about the Ordinaries. You never have.

“From that very first night in my home, you were playing me.”

“And I am.” Calum laces those long fingers behind his back. “Very proud of the puppet you became for me.”

You’re not just a Mind Reader, are you?” I take a slow step toward him. “You are a Dual.

“You’re a Mind Reader, and a Controller.”

A part of you wanted to watch me grow up. Every meeting, every conversation with my father, you were learning about me.”