Reign Of Shadows: Rise Of Fire Part 15

Chin lifted at a haughty angle, Luna turned to the guard. "I'm weary. Let us go."

They continued, moving away from me. I watched, helpless to pursue her with Maris watching, her hands still locked on me like she would never let go.

TWENTY.

Luna

I WAS ALMOST to my bedchamber door when steps sounded behind us. I turned, my heart racing, treacherous hope stirring inside me that it was Fowler, that he had turned away from his princess and come after me. Pathetic, especially knowing he was clearly invested in a relations.h.i.+p with Princess Maris, but I couldn't force my heart to feel any differently.

"Leave us," Prince Chasan's voice bit out to the guard beside me.

"Yes, Your Highness."

I opened my mouth to protest as the guard left me, but warm fingers circled my wrist and tugged me inside my chamber.

"Prince Chasan," I gasped. "What are you doing? You shouldn't be here. This isn't seemly."

The door clicked shut behind us, sealing us in, and a bolt of alarm slithered down my spine. "What were you doing at the pits?"

"I heard the screams."

"And you followed the sound? How could you have thought that a good idea?"

I inhaled sharply. "You know we're avoiding the more important matter."

"And what is that?" he challenged, still holding my arm. I gave it several yanks and he finally released me.

"Why?" I demanded, rubbing my arm where he had gripped me. "How can you stand there and cheer and place bets as a person is torn to pieces in front of you? And then you just let your father execute that girl-Riana! What's wrong with you? With all of you?" I knew bad people and horribleness existed on the Outside, but in here it should have been different. It was that belief that had started breaking me down and convincing me that I could do this. Stay here. Be a wife to someone I didn't know. Forget Fowler . . . as he had apparently forgotten me.

Chasan didn't reply. I heard nothing beyond the hard rhythm of his breath.

Emotion welled up in my throat as I thought about the man who had died tonight, the sound of his cries, the noise his bones made as the dwellers tore him apart. And the thud of Riana's head. Her father's scream.

"Say nothing." I nodded fiercely. "There is not an excuse, not a defense you can offer." I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "I can't marry such a person."

"No?" he quickly retorted, his voice ruthless as a whip. "And who might you marry, Luna?" His voice twisted into something hard and mean. "Your precious Fowler? I just pa.s.sed him in the hall with my sister. I'm sure you saw them, too. Quite the cozy pair."

He knew exactly where I was the most tender and bruised and he struck me there with a well-aimed blow. "I needn't marry anyone," I flung out.

"If you think that, then you really are a fool. You think you can go against my father? He will never let you leave this place, and if you don't do what he asks you'll be spending the rest of your days as a guest in our dungeon. Or worse."

His words bubbled like toxin in my veins. I cranked back my arm and struck him in the chest with my balled-up fist. "Is that why you hunt dwellers? Because your father demands it? Is that why you capture them and bring them back here? You do it because he tells you to? What else do you do that he demands? Oh, that's right! You marry lost princesses."

"Luna, stop."

"Tell me, Chasan, who are those people that have to die for your amus.e.m.e.nts? What have they done to deserve that?"

"They've made an enemy of my father . . . of Lagonia."

I shook my head. "I don't want this. I don't want to be here. I'm not a part of this world where you butcher people. You're a coward." I turned away, but he grabbed me and hauled me back to face him.

He gave me a small shake, snapping my head back to focus on him. "You are a part of it. No matter what you want. You're going to be a part of it and you'll say nothing to the contrary unless you want to bring the wrath of my father down on you, and trust me, that's not something you want. Understand?"

My breath fell in hard pants.

"Say you understand me, Luna." There was an edge of panic that I had never heard before in his liquid-smooth voice. "Say it," he insisted, chasing the words with another shake. "I won't have you hurt. I can't."

His words, as much unsaid as said, deflated my anger. "You're afraid of him," I whispered.

"He's a monster," he admitted, dropping his hands from my arms, and for the first time I considered that. I considered him. I thought about what it must be like to be brought up by such a man . . . how trapped you must feel when your own father was a nightmare you had to face each and every day. Not that different from Fowler.

We stood in silence for a long moment, only our breaths between us. He closed the s.p.a.ce, his bigger body radiating heat and vitality as it crept toward me. "We don't have to live in fear forever. We just need to hold on, Luna." His forehead dropped to mine, fingers flexing on my arms. "We just have to wait it out."

Wait for Tebald to die. That was what he was saying. We had to wait until he was no longer in power and we could take over.

"You have a good heart, Luna," he continued, his voice insinuating into my spinning thoughts. "Better than my own. Better than anyone I've ever met before. You want to do the right thing even if it hurts you. Only I don't want you to be hurt." His lips ghosted over mine. I gasped at the brush of contact.

I didn't have time to pull away from his almost-kiss. It was over as quickly as it had begun, but I still felt a tight clench low in my stomach. Regret whispered through me. I could have kicked myself for the weak thought. Why should I feel loyalty to Fowler when he had already forgotten about me?

"I want to try to be more like you, Luna. Together, with you, I think I can. We could be good together. We could be good for Lagonia and Relhok."

His words wove through me, a seductive spell sinking deep. Could he mean that? I weighed the possibility. Relhok and Lagonia united, without Cullan or Tebald at the helm. The black eclipse and its dwellers would still exist, but things wouldn't have to be so hopeless.

Marriage to Chasan meant not living for myself, but it also meant making a difference in the lives of others. I could make this world a better place. Wasn't that what Sivo and Perla had groomed me to do? They had believed that was my fate. They taught me to believe it, too.

"I can see you're thinking about it, Luna." His hands fell to his sides with a whisper. I nodded once, relieved at the distance between us so that I could think without his hands touching me. "Good. Consider it. You have time. A little time," he amended. However much time his father would give us.

He moved away toward the door, his steps soft and steady in the great expanse of my room. "We'll talk again soon."

Then I was alone in the pulsing silence of my bedchamber with only my clamoring thoughts for company.

TWENTY-ONE.

Fowler

IT TOOK A little longer than I'd hoped to disengage myself from Maris and send her on her way to her own bedchamber. She was tenacious. I would give her that. She had been waiting all her life for me. Not me specifically, but the prince she had been promised. There was a distinction. She didn't know me. She didn't care to know me, and she certainly didn't love me. I was merely the prize that had been dangled before her nose all these years. Now that I was here she did not know the meaning of self-control.

I eased out from my chamber, headfirst, relieved to see that there was no guard at my door and no one in the corridor. I crept along, heading in the direction I had last seen Luna and her escort take. I listened at doors, hoping for any indication of which room might be hers.

A door creaked open somewhere ahead of me and I ducked to the side, flattening against the other side of a beam that jutted out from the wall. Peering around the post, I watched as Chasan stepped out of a room and into the corridor. He turned back to look inside the bedchamber before closing the door. In that moment I glimpsed Luna standing a few feet from the threshold, staring in his general direction as he left her.

What was Chasan doing in her room? A wave of helplessness washed over me at the possibility that I was too late, that she had already changed her mind about me.

I gave myself a hard mental shake. She had just happened upon Maris outside my bedchamber. I had no right to these feelings. Jealousy, annoyance . . . the dark impulse to grab Chasan and stomp all over him wasn't something I could give in to. It wasn't something I wanted to feel.

The prince turned and I quickly pressed myself against the wall, pressing hard into the stone, trying to make myself invisible. Chasan pa.s.sed by without glancing left, then turned the corner.

With a deep breath I collected myself and stepped away from the wall. I strode to Luna's room, determination fueling me. I couldn't be too late.

I knocked once lightly, so as not to frighten her, and then walked inside.

She whirled around as I shut the door behind me. There was a flash of panic on her face, and I hated that I made her feel that way. For all she knew I was a stranger storming into her room.

She sucked in a deep breath-hopefully not to scream-and the alarm subsided from her features. By scent or sound, she knew it was me.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Does Chasan visit your room in the middle of the night regularly?" I couldn't help myself. The ugly beast that had stirred inside me when I spotted him leaving her room insisted on surfacing.

"I don't know. Does Maris visit yours?"

I sighed. "That wasn't what it looked like." I stared at her, waiting for her to offer me the same rea.s.surance. It never came. She crossed her arms over her chest and c.o.c.ked one eyebrow.

I rocked back on my heels, fighting down the impulse to demand why Chasan was in her room as though it was my right to know. It was a battle lost. "Why was he here?"

"Are you truly asking me that?" Indignation hung on every word. Her implication was clear: How could I ask that after she'd just found me with Maris?

"Chasan is not Maris. He's no harmless suitor. He is as manipulative and cunning as his father." And I'd seen the way he looked at Luna.

"Is that so? And how often have you seen him exactly? Talked to him? You've scarcely risen from your sickbed, where Maris attends you ever so diligently."

"I've seen it in his eyes. I know his sort."

She inhaled swiftly, pulling her shoulders back, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. I hadn't meant to make it sound like I viewed her as less in any way because of her blindness, but that was precisely what I had done. "Oh, that's right. I'm merely a blind girl. I can't possibly be a good judge of character."

The word merely couldn't be applied Luna. Not in any way. She would always be everything. Of course, if I were to tell her that right now, she wouldn't believe me.

Sighing, I dragged a hand through my hair. "I didn't come here to fight with you."

"You shouldn't have come here at all."

"Oh, I shouldn't, but it's acceptable for Chasan to visit you in the middle of the night?"

"He wanted to make sure I was all right after what happened. He saved my life tonight."

He saved her life? It made me resent him all the more. I should have been there for her. I didn't want to think she might need him. "You don't even know him," I shot back.

"He's my betrothed," she replied evenly, but there was a stiffness to her voice that was impossible to miss.

I froze. Hearing this from her curdled my blood. "Is that true? You'll marry him?" My heart raced at the possibility that she had accepted this as her fate.

"Is that not the expectation?"

Not precisely an answer. "I've never cared much about the expectations of others." Nor had I thought she cared. I'd imagined that she'd be eager to leave this place. But if I were to believe her now, she wouldn't be leaving with me.

She snorted and edged even farther away from me. "I just caught you kissing Maris, and here you stand wanting me to define my relations.h.i.+p with Chasan." She flung out her words like a well-aimed arrow and tsked. "Hardly reasonable."

"She kissed me." The truth, but it rang weakly even to my ears.

Luna released a huff of hollow laughter and shook her head, clearly not impressed with my excuse. "You don't owe me an explanation. I don't own your lips."

My chest swelled on a tense breath. "You know how I feel about you. I haven't hid my feelings-"

"Fowler, don't."

"We need to talk," I insisted, following her retreating form across the room. She used to listen to me, but now she felt distant.

She continued backing away from me, c.o.c.king her head at a wary angle. "If you are found in here-"

"They're keeping us apart." I stayed dogged in my pursuit of her, my steps biting into the plush rug covering the stone floor. "You have to see that. Since we arrived here. They don't want us alone together."

She shrugged, twisting her hands into the voluminous fabric of her nightgown. "It matters not. There's nothing we have to say to each other worth risking their displeasure-"

"Risking their displeasure? Do you hear yourself? You sound frightened . . . beaten. Where is the Luna that I know?"

"Maybe you don't know me. Maybe you never did. I certainly don't know you." Her chest lifted high on a quick inhalation. I knew she was thinking about me standing in the corridor with Maris, and regret stabbed me in the chest.

"You're wrong." I stepped forward and touched her face. She flinched but didn't pull back. I clung to that. I could still reach her. "Do you feel my gaze on you? Do you feel my heart, Luna? It's yours. It belongs to you. You know me." I added my other hand to her face, holding her as gently as a bird in my hands, careful not to crush her wings.

Moisture gathered in her ink-dark eyes. Her voice came out in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I thought I did. I don't blame you for your birth. I'm not angry about that anymore. It's not your fault who your father is. But that doesn't change the fact that I still don't know you. I don't know what it is that truly drives you, I don't know why you're running from your father, I don't know why you're agreeable to staying here, to marrying Maris-"

"You. You drive me. It didn't used to be that way. I can't explain exactly when or how it became that way. But that's the way it is."

She didn't speak for some time, various emotions flickering across her face. She looked down at the ground as though she felt the weight of my stare and needed to escape it. "What?" I asked. "What are you thinking? Tell me, Luna. Talk to me."