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I took control, I found another way, and yet I am still not free from my burdens. Now I’m simply a pawn in someone else’s game, just as I was before.

“Why was I chosen? What’s so special about me?” I ask, but don’t expect an answer. Samuel glances away and Zeke shrugs stiffly.

“Maybe they knew you were Rowan’s mate somehow. Maybe it was pure luck. I don’t know what caught everyone’s attention. But you can’t–”

“I think you and your brother lost the ability to control me with all these half-truths I’ve been fed,” I snarl. “None of this should have been dragged out for so long.”

“Then tell me how you stop someone with a death wish from dying,” Zeke argues. “You buy time, pray something changes, and do everything in your power to make them see reason and reality.”

“The reality is you all lied to me.”

“Rowan loves you. He lied to save your life,” Zeke scoffs.

Did he really say Rowan loves me? After everything I know now, I’m supposed to believe this was all done in the name of love? I begin laughing again, tossing my head back as tears gather in my eyes.

They streak paths down my face. Carving my pain into my skin for all to see. As they pass my cheeks, the snake slithers from face down my neck and beneath my shirt.

Even my tattoo bestowed upon me by Rowan is ashamed to be connected to him.

Laughter swells again at the idea. Doubling over, I clutch my stomach with one hand as I bend over, sucking air into my lungs as I try to calm the hysterics bubbling out of my mouth.

Wiping the back of my hand across my eyes, I smear the tears away. “This is love?” A snort escapes. “This?” I point towards my feet in reference to where I am now in the world. “That’s a fucking joke, Zeke. You don’t lie to the people you love. You don’t string them along for the sole purpose of keeping someone else alive and not tell the fucking person who wants to die about it.” By the time I finish speaking, I’m screaming the words out.

I care for Rowan, I do. Nothing in this world will make me do the things he did and play games under the guise of love. This isn’t what I asked for. Someone could have told me all I needed was a High Lord and I would have come straight here instead of wasting weeks searching for answers that were being purposely hidden from me.

All of the emotions raging inside of me, anger takes the first hold of my heart. It feels like it snuffs out anything redeemable about this situation, voiding out anything Rowan has ever said to me. If you can lie about the big things, you can lie about the little things, too. There’s no telling when this will stop.

Do I feel for the children involved? Yes. I’m one of them and I can’t imagine the bullshit they’re going through, the lies the people in Tellus are feeding them to help in their efforts to create a war where they forcibly assault Aïdes by coming from the sky and sea.

“This isn’t my fight.” Maybe if I had been told the truth from the beginning, I would be standing here considering something different entirely. But what if’s don’t change my life right now. I was willing to help a war for the right causes, but how do you help someone when they don’t trust you?

Remnants of Rowan’s voice scream inside of my mind.

Turning my gaze to Zeke, I feel as though my eyes are glowing as I blink through the tears still falling. “I’ll trust you, when you trust me.” They’re not the exact words Rowan said to me, but they echo the same sentiment. The truth of this situation is neither of us trust the other.

When I came to Aïdes, I never trusted Rowan to keep his word to help me find death, so I went about it all on my own. Maybe my actions are the reason he chose to withhold information from me, but he also knew a lot more than he let on far before we ever came face to face. From where I’m standing, trust was broken before it was ever given.

Samuel rises from the couch, disrupting the distrustful stares Zeke and I are throwing each other. I turn my gaze, showing my lack of fear of the dragon in front of me, to look directly at Samuel as he comes closer. His violet eyes swing from Zeke to me and back again several times before he finally stops on my form. Clearing his throat, he sets his eyes solely on me until it feels like we’re the only two in the room. “What will it be, Keres? Do you want to die?”