Crowntide (Lightlark #4)

by Alex Aster

she noticed all of them were missing one of their fingers. She remembered Cronan’s words. He required a bone, from each of his supporters.

These were all the planets Cronan had destroyed. They lived in his crown. But they didn’t live in him. He hadn’t truly consumed them, then. He wasn’t like her. He was simply moving power, collecting it, not absorbing it.

“I will kill every single person there. Until the world is nothing but dust and ashes in our wake.”

“Fifty worlds. I’ve conquered each of them, so you will find my knights there. You will only be able to go to the next world once you’ve killed one of them. If you reach the other side of this room, then I’ll let you live. I’ll pretend this unfortunate event never happened.”

The man’s aura was lifted off his skin and turned into the shape of his planet, with various rings of energy around it— And it swept across the room, melding to his crown.

He slipped the knife from the band of her undergarments. He had noticed it was gone the moment she collapsed back into her seat at the table. The stunt with the fork had been a distraction. To get this.

The knife he had slid into his pocket was now trained against his throat.

“You might not care about me anymore, but can you say the same for your people?”

“Don’t put a blade to my throat unless you intend to use it,”

Why had he taken the memories to begin with? It didn’t make any sense. Unless he believed . . . that together . . . he and the Wildling could defeat him.

No. He wouldn’t erase Laila from his mind. That was the only place she still existed.

Especially when all this pain just made him stronger. It was useful.

“Hello, husband,” she whispered. She held out her hand, right through the bars, as if to shake his. “I’m your wife.”

“Love does not make you weak,” she said. “It made us stronger.”

“I told you. You are nothing. I hope he kills you for this,” he said. “That way I never have to see you again.”

Instead, she flung her arm out and wrapped her hand around Grim’s ankle.

He did not typically bow before gods. He did not pray. But he bowed before her and worshipped her like a zealot.

“Please,” she panted against his mouth. Anything, he thought. I would give you anything, especially if you begged for it.

“You’re a bastard in each lifetime, I guess,” she said. “In every version of our love story.” “There is no love story,”

“Because I love you.”

“You don’t love me. You love a weak, foolish version of me that is dead.”

“Learn from this. Learn that those who you save, those who you let live, will betray you eventually. You must slaughter them first, or become the slaughtered.”

And slit the woman’s throat.

And creating a temporary shadow barrier around her cell so the knights wouldn’t hear her.