“Where to begin?” Kalyll ran his thumb over his lower lip, thinking.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring at the rose. “Sometimes the beginning is a good place. Sometimes it’s not.”
“In this instance, I’m afraid it’s the latter.”
I opened my mouth to say something but didn’t know what, so I waited. I was afraid that if I pushed him, he would clam up and tell me nothing.
“You must understand that you cannot repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone. It would endanger many things, the most important of them, my people.”
I nodded.
“Can I trust you?” His gaze seemed to reach deep inside me as he demanded an answer.
A part of me, the part that was still angry about being uprooted from my life, wanted to learn all his secrets just to use them against him, to turn his existence upside down, and then laugh in his face, gleefully enjoying my revenge. But that part of me was infinitesimal. It was the tiny devil on my shoulders that I never listened to because I always did what was right, because, like my youngest sister said, I was a goody-two-shoes. So when I answered him, it was with the conviction that I would never betray his confidence.
“You can trust me,” I said.
He smiled gently. “I think I already knew that.”
Taking a deep breath, he angled his body in my direction, causing his thigh to brush mine. His warmth seeped through my leggings, and I couldn’t find it in me to shift positions to create some distance between us.
“You are not entirely wrong, Ms. Sunder. You asked me if I am ill, and perhaps that’s not far from the truth. Somethingiswrong with me. Or perhaps wrong is the incorrect word and I should say… different. Recently, there have been… changes. None of it is good, especially the timing. These changes, they were always meant to happen, except I didn’t know it.” A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he glanced away from the water to look at me.
For some reason, my heart raced. I disguised my nervousness by tucking that stubborn lock of hair behind my ear, then wrung my hands together, fearing what he would say, sensing how significant this revelation would be, how critical to his job as a prince, how entangled with the reasons for my presence here, how central to the quest ahead of us, how… how…everything.
He went on. “You are a very perceptive woman, and I can tell that your mind has already been hard at work on this riddle. Undoubtedly, you’ve noticed my absences during the night, and my change in temper before that.” He looked up through the branches and leaves above us as if to check the time based on the sun’s trajectory, the way Arabis always did. “At noon, I won’t be quite myself anymore, and tonight, I will be unable to attend the Summer Solstice Ball.”
Hanging from his every word, I pressed a hand to my chest and felt my heart racing as if it rested on my very fingers.
Kalyll ran a hand over his brow, then rubbed circles on his temple. He was quiet for a long time, and I sensed how difficult it was for him to keep going, to actually confide in me the closer he got to the truth. Without thinking, I pressed a hand to his thigh. He tensed under my touch, eyes flicking in my direction. Through his trousers, I felt hard muscle, latent strength that had been honed to lethal perfection.
“Why?” I asked. “Why will you be different?”
He stared at the ground. “Because… I’m cursed. Because my blood is cursed.”
CHAPTER 16
Cursed?Hisbloodiscursed?
What could he ever mean by that?
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Sometimes I don’t understand it myself.” He chuckled sadly. “What you see now it’s who I am. I have full control of my emotions, my temper—not to say I can’t lose it sometimes.” An apologetic shrug. “But after the sun reaches its peak, something else takes over, and I can only sit back and watch. Then at night… that something else does a lot more than control my temper. It changes me completely, turns me into a mindless monster that I’m completely and utterly incapable of stopping.”
I remember the darkness swirling around his eyes, the bulging black veins as he spat biting words at me and almost killed Valeriana.
“That is why Arabis is always with you,” I said. “Her power can stop you.”
“Not always.” His fists tightened until his knuckles turned white. “I hurt her last night. I almost killed her.”
I gasped.
“I know you healed her, and I thank you greatly for it.”
All I could do was shake my head to indicate it was nothing.
“You see, she and I stayed beyond the walls to ensure everyone’s safety here in the palace. For half the night, I roamed the woods.” His eyes grew dark and distant. “Then the beast got it in its head to enter the city. Arabis tried to stop me, and for the first time, I didn’t listen to her. I attacked my friend and almost killed her. It took all of her strength to issue one final command. She was already wounded and the extra effort… it could have been her undoing.” He met my eyes, his expression pleading. “If the beast doesn’t listen to her anymore, what am I to do?” The last few words were a whisper full of dread and hopelessness.