“Please do.” I toss another berry in my mouth and flash him a smile. “Thanks for the fruit. It’s really, really good.”
I leave the room without looking back.
King Ostern waved his sons and daughter off this aurora rise. We both watched them disappear into the distance before two of his guards snapped iron cuffs around my wrists.
I was shoved into a bland room, forced into a chair. The King crouched before me, looking like he wanted to slaughter me.
He told me my behavior was unbecoming of a future queen. That he’d seen the way Kaan watched me. Acted around me.
That he knew we were “fucking.”
He told me Kaan is not fit to rule a kingdom because he can only wield two elemental songs. That he is not, and never will be, worthy of a crown.
I spat in his face. Told him I’d choose my own king or I would not bind at all.
That I would give myself to the Creators.
He sucked all the air from my lungs and made me feel like my ribs were caving, then told me that he’d noticed how friendly I am with Veya. That if I didn’t bind with Tyroth, he’d rid the world of the little bitch who took his bound. That he’d inform the twins of Kaan’s transgressions, and the three of them would hunt him down, then saw off his head. That he wouldn’t stand a chance.
I’ve never felt fear so real.
He said that if I left the next rise to prepare for the binding ceremony, he’d offer Slátra safe passage back to Arithia. Alternatively, he’d leave her hutch unguarded as I’m dragged across the plains, and I’d be forced to watch her kill herself trying to follow me home.
Then he got real close and looked at me like he could see straight through my skull. Told me he’d been informed that my bleeding is late—something I hadn’t considered until that very moment.
Hadn’t even realized.
He said this is the only way my youngling will have a chance at life. That if Tyroth believes he sired the small seed apparently growing in my belly, all will be well. Otherwise, there will be nowhere Kaan and I can hide where they won’t find us. They’ll hunt us down for this filthy dishonor we’ve bestowed upon our families.
I’ve decided this is the trade-off for finding such a great love like Mah and Pah’s. That mine, too, must end in tragedy, bearing the curse of my family name.
More fire smudges across my abdomen—an incinerating trail that seeps through my flesh, muscle, and bone, filling my lungs with the acrid smell of burning meat.
I jolt against the cold stone bench, muscles spasming.
Shackles biting.
Another scream threatens to burst past my gritted teeth, but I refuse to release it, shaking my head again and again while he paints … paints … paints me in bubbled, blistering welts.
“I know it hurts …” The orange flame tethered to the tip of the Scavenger King’s finger glints off his sooty eyes. “But pain hardens you, Fire Lark. It makes you so exhilarating to watch in the pits, and my coffers love it.” He moves about me in a flutter of frayed fabric, the outline of his bony crown jutting from his head like mangled fingers. “Just remember—you wouldn’t be so marvelous without this. Without me.”
I’ve heard the same words more times than I know the numbers to count. But what makes him so special that he gets to make me hurt, but I don’t get to do the same to him?
Fallon’s been teaching me many things—big words and big world things that are hard to grapple—and the more I learn, the less this makes sense. The more I want to get my hands around his neck and make it crack.
I think I’d like that. Then Fallon and I could escape. She could finally show me the moons—the real ones. Not the ones we draw on our ceiling.
She could also show me the colorful clouds she’s always talking about.
The Scavenger King whispers his flame into a ball he spreads down my leg, searing me all the way to the tips of my toes. My muscles spasm as I chew on a scream, gaze speared through the cleft in the ceiling to where his beast peers down from the shadows—always watching.
Always rumbling.
I picture my pain pouring into that same cleft, disappearing. Draining away before it gets a chance to take root as I hum a tune in my head. A slow, peaceful song that’s been with me since the start.
“Sometime soon, I’ll wear my bronze crown and you won’t ever have to hurt again. I’ll be on my rightful throne, and you’ll be by my side, enjoying the spoils of your battles.”
More fire is smeared down my shin, and I become deadly certain of one thing: