“You don’t really think he’s just going to turn around and leave once he has me, do you?” I ask, trying to pull my arm out of his hold.

“Well, I know he won’t leave if I don’t give you up.”

Okay, good point.

“You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do this,” I say. “I can see that you’re a good king and a good man. You really wouldn’t hand over an innocent woman into the clutches of her abuser, would you?”

A conflicted waver flickers in his eyes—it’s true that he’s a good king. He’s just protecting his people.

“Don’t listen to her!” Linden hisses. “She fills your ears with poison. You think she didn’t do the same to my brother?”

I grit my teeth and resist the urge to lash out. “I’m not,” I hiss.

“Your Majesty!” Rion calls from below, and we all turn to face him.

I stare down at the Aurora King, hating everything. He looks too much like Nadir but nothing like him at all. He is the sum total of so much misery in my life. Exacting my revenge has always been a desire that sits in the center of my heart like a pellet of jagged iron, and gods, the vicious things I’d do to him if I ever got the chance. It would break both of us, but I’d consider every moment worth the price.

“Give her to me, and then we’ll be out of your way. This girl is nothing to you. Or to anyone, really. Just an heir to a broken queendom that, soon enough, everyone will forget about for good.”

Those words touch some deep, insecure part of me because he’s right, isn’t he? If we had never left Nostraza, none of this would be happening. The last drops of Heart magic would die with me, and that would be it.

But the people of Heart are counting on me. I can’t let them die. It’s been almost three hundred years and they waited, never losing faith. I refuse to let them down.

But Cyan won’t care about any of that.

“I’m sorry,” Cyan says, and my chest deflates. “But I have no choice.”

He starts to drag me away from the railing, and I don’t think. I forget all my earlier reservations. I don’t consider what I’m doing. I just react.

My hand flies out, and I explode.

Lightning bursts out of me, bleeding across the sky in rough crimson streaks.

My ears fill with the unbearable sound of terrified screams and the crack of crumbling stone, and then . . . I’m falling.

CHAPTER 18