Don’t fall.
Fly.
We’ve been transported back into that moment in the library again. Except now, parts of me are missing. Taken away. The wounds on my back twinge, but it only serves to make me feel more resolute. I twist the ribbon in my hand.
“I don’t want to be weak ever again.”
He absorbs my determined declaration with quiet study. I see his dusky green eyes flicker just beside my face, as if he’s looking at my aura. His is stowed away, the black vapors that hug his form hidden right alongside his spikes and scales.
“I want to master my own strength—physically and magically,” I tell him, my words sounding out of breath with the exertion of what lies ahead. And even though it no longer feels, no longer moves or lives, the ribbon still offers me its fortitude.
I wait, my breathing erratic, the feel of my heartbeat thumping hard against my bones. I’m not exactly sure what I’m waiting for him to say. Maybe that I don’t have to worry. That I have him and the others in my corner now.
But none of that changes my determination.
I need to be strong for myself. Because I will never forget that feeling of being held against a wall while I was mutilated. I will never forget that feeling of utter helplessness.
Perhaps things are born from trauma. An anger. A clarity.
A beast.
It scares me. Terrifies the hell out of me—of what I did that night. Because I don’t know my own power. But that’s been the problem all along, hasn’t it?
Maybe none of us truly know our own strength. Not until the world has hacked away at us. But the point is, we aren’t strong because of our trauma. We were always strong to begin with. We just needed to figure it out for ourselves.
Which is why I meet Slade’s eye, and I don’t waver when I say, “I want to be so strong that I never have to fear anyone else in this world. That if I need to, I can make them all fear me. And I want you to teach me.”
Silence reigns like a rigid monarch.
For a moment, I wonder if I’ve crossed a line. If I’ve shocked him. Worry makes me want to gnaw on my bottom lip.
But then, Slade grins.
I can see it right there on his face—the pride. The excitement. It’s wholly fae too, something almost animalistic about it. As if his own vengeful beast is ready to rise up and roar alongside mine. It’s contagious, and maybe a little unhinged, and I feel my own lips tipping up too.
He comes over, reaches up to grab hold of my chin, and then he leans down until his lips are skimming against mine so that I can feel his words when he murmurs. “Oh, Goldfinch. I’d thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 19
RISSA
The first time I traveled across Fifth Kingdom with the army, I was a captive.
The royal saddles were kept together like pigs in a pen, guarded day and night. Our tent was bursting with all of us in it, which isn’t a good mix at the best of times but certainly not when everyone is cold, stressed, and scared.
I thought one of the saddles was going to yank someone’s hair out or slap a few cheeks by the time we finally reached Ranhold. I had to constantly intervene between them, trying to manage short tempers and help to resolve issues so no one clawed anyone’s eyes out.
This time, the traveling experience is different. I’m not a captive, but a grudging guest instead, and I’m not sharing a tent with a dozen saddles—only Polly. But I’m still managing bouts of short tempers, and if anyone’s eyes are going to be clawed out, it will be mine.
It’s been weeks since we left Ranhold, and it’s so difficult to keep up with such a punishing pace. Even though Polly and I ride in a carriage all day, I’m exhausted by the time we make camp every night.
Though my exhaustion isn’t just due to the travel.
I glance over at where Polly is sitting hunched on her pallet bed, shivering over the coals where they burn in a cauldron in the middle of our tent. I give it ten minutes, and then she’ll be snapping at me that she’s having hot flashes again, and she’ll start pouring out sweat, demanding ice packs.
All this time, and she’s still going through withdrawals.
The first few days, she was in a rage. Screaming at me for taking her away from Ranhold, crying about the news of Midas being dead, threatening to leave and walk back on her own. It was only because her bursts of energy were very short-lived that I was always able to drag her back to the tent before she could get too far.
She hates me.
I hate that she hates me.
Yet I still take care of her, because she is the closest friend I’ve ever had. Or at least, perhaps the longest one.