Tears burn salty tracks down my cheeks, and I hate myself for crying. I just watched who knows how many people die, and killed many of them myself. How can I shed tears over this? Over one person still breathing right before my eyes?
My voice hitches. “Is this the part where I ask you to choose me?”
Because it is a choice. He need only say no. Or yes. One word holds both our fates.
Choose me. Choose the dawn. He didn’t before. He has to now.
Shaking, I take his face in my hands and turn him to look at me. When he can’t, when his bronze eyes focus on my lips or my shoulder or the brand exposed to the warm air, something inside me breaks.
“I don’t have to marry her,” he murmurs. “That can be negotiated.”
“No, it can’t. You know it can’t.” I laugh coldly at his absurd posturing.
His eyes darken. “And you know what marriage is to us—to Silvers. It doesn’t mean anything. It has no bearing on what we feel, and who we feel for.”
“Do you really think it’s the marriage I’m angry about?” Rage boils in me, hot and wild and impossible to ignore. “Do you really think I have any ambition to be your—or anyone’s—queen?”
Warm fingers tremble against mine, their grip tightening as I start to slip away. “Mare, think of what I can do. What kind of king I can be.”
“Why does anyone need to be king at all?” I ask slowly, sharpening every word.
He has no answer.
In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did. But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut.
I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was.
He was born to be a king. It’s what he was made for. It’s what he was made to want.
“Tiberias.” I’ve never said his real name before. It doesn’t suit him. It doesn’t suit us. But that’s who he is. “Choose me.”
His hands smooth over mine, his fingers splaying to match my own. As he does, I shut my eyes. I allow myself one long second to memorize what he feels like. Like that day in Piedmont, when the rainstorm caught us both, I want to burn. I want to burn.
“Mare,” he whispers. “Choose me.”
Choose a crown. Choose another king’s cage. Choose a betrayal to everything you’ve bled for.
I find my thread of steel too. Thin but unbreakable.
“I am in love with you, and I want you more than anything else in the world.” His words sound hollow coming from me. “Anything else in this world.”
Slowly, my eyelids flutter open. He finds the spine to match my gaze.
“Think what we could do together,” he murmurs, trying to pull me closer. My feet hold firm. “You know what you are to me. Without you, I have no one. I am alone. I have nothing left. Don’t leave me alone.”
My breathing turns ragged.
I kiss him for what could be, what might be, what will be—the last time. His lips feel strangely cold as we both turn to ice.
“You aren’t alone.” The hope in his eyes cuts deeply. “You have your crown.”
I thought I knew what heartbreak was. I thought that was what Maven did to me. When he stood and left me kneeling. When he told me everything I ever thought him to be was a lie. But then, I believed I loved him.
I know now, I didn’t know what love was. Or what even the echo of heartbreak felt like.
To stand in front of a person who is your whole world and be told you are not enough. You are not the choice. You are a shadow to the person who is your sun.
“Mare, please.” He begs like a child in his desperation. “How did you think this was going to end? What did you really think would happen next?” I feel the heat of him even as every part of me goes cold. “You don’t have to do this.”
But I do.
I turn away, deaf to his protests. But he doesn’t try to stop me. He lets me walk away.
Blood drowns out everything but my screaming thoughts. Terrible ideas, hateful words, broken and twisted like a bird without wings. They limp by, each one worse than the last. Not a god’s chosen, but a god’s cursed. That’s what we all are.
It’s a wonder I don’t fall down the spiraling steps of the tower—a miracle I make it outside without collapsing. The sun overhead is hatefully bright, a harsh contrast to the abyss inside me. I shove a hand deep into my uniform pocket and barely register the sharp sting of something. It doesn’t take long to realize—the earring. The one Cal gave me. I almost laugh at the thought of it. Another broken promise. Another Calore betrayal.