Page 68 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

‘Push me away one moment and pull me close da next. Ya say yer a monster, then turn gentle.’ Her jaw tensed. ‘Stop confusing me, Arden. Ya can’t be both. Yer either Black Lotus or yer Arden Briar. Choose.’

He didn’t answer right away. The wind passed between them, rustling the fabric of war and memory.

‘I am a monster,’ he said at last, his voice tinged with something bitter, something broken.

Wren lifted her chin, eyes steady on his. ‘Aren’t we all?’

‘I've done terrible things.’

‘Haven't we all?’ Wren muttered, her voice carrying the weight of countless sins, both confessed and buried.

Arden exhaled, the breath catching in his throat as if reluctant to leave him.

‘I don’t want to be a monster when I’m with you.

’ His hand drifted to the back of his neck, rubbing absently, a boyish gesture ill-fitted to the man he had become.

Then he stepped back, as though putting distance might silence the ghosts.

‘My parents were farmers,’ he began, his tone hollow with memory.

‘We had a modest plot. Nothing grand, just enough to live by. My mother raised me and my siblings while my father fought to keep the land.’ He swallowed hard.

‘But the tax increased, and we couldn’t pay.

One day, soldiers came, men sent by the king.

My father resisted. Fought them off as best he could, but there were too many.

They killed him. Just like that. The king had promised the land to one of his nobles. ’

Wren's heart twisted. ‘Yer mother?’ she asked, the faintest stirring of hope sparking in her chest .

He shook his head slowly, the shadows in his eyes darkening.

‘The Fae can be elegant, graceful even, but they can hide wickedness beneath their silk and spellcraft. They took my mother away, said she’d serve in the palace.

A place of splendour, they said.’ He hesitated, gaze dropping.

‘But she wasn’t there to cook or clean.’

Wren’s brow furrowed, not yet understanding.

‘They sent her to the pleasure court.’

The words fell like ash between them.

She blinked, confusion giving way to horror. ‘What…?’

‘Captured Fae are forced to serve the nobility's whims. She didn’t run. She couldn’t.

They threatened to hurt her children if she tried.

So she stayed. Endured.’ He turned from her then, shoulders taut with barely contained fury.

‘A noble took her one night and beat her so savagely that she never recovered. Shattered her legs. Mutilated her.’ His jaw clenched.

‘When they were finished with her, they tossed her into the gutter like rotted meat. Alone. Broken. She didn’t survive long. ’

Silence followed, so thick it choked. Wren didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Her eyes stung, and the tears came fast, hot, and unbidden. She brushed them away with trembling fingers, as if furious with herself for weeping. But how could she not?

‘My brothers and I were sent into the Black Lotus, to be forged into the king’s personal assassins, his spies. One of my brothers refused. They executed him. The other died during our second mission. And so, I was left alone.’

His voice was cold, stripped of grief, as though he’d locked the pain away long ago.

‘The Black Lotus is not a brotherhood. There is no kinship between us, no camaraderie. We are strangers with matching scars. We know one another only by the sound of our screams echoing through wooden halls. Even our names were taken from us. We were given new ones. I don’t remember mine. I do not wish to. I am Arden Briar.’

‘That’s awful,’ Wren whispered, her voice catching.

‘It is all I’ve ever known,’ he said, not with bitterness, but with the bleak resignation of a man whose past offered no softness. ‘I kill for the king who sentenced my family to death.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

Arden blinked, clearly taken aback. Perhaps no one had ever dared to ask. Wren’s heart ached for him. She longed to reach for him, to pull him into her arms and whisper that he was more than the blade they had made him into.

‘Why do ya do it?’ she asked again, more softly this time. She was about to step forward, to offer him that comfort, but something in his expression halted her. A flash of warning. A breath held too long.

‘Because I am a monster,’ he said. ‘That’s what they bred me to be.’

‘To follow orders blindly?’ Her voice was sharp now, edged with anger. When he nodded once, stiffly, she froze. What horrors had they endured, these boys, to shape them into weapons that bent to cruelty without question?

‘But ya didn’t do it,’ Wren said, her voice gentler. ‘Ya didn’t kill Vera. Why?’

His eyes met hers, those storm-dark green eyes, wild with the weight of all he carried. And in that moment, Wren knew. Knew with terrifying certainty that no matter how far Arden had fallen into darkness, she would not stop fighting for him.

He reached out, his fingertips brushing against her arm, hesitant. Testing. Searching her face as if for permission, for forgiveness, for salvation.

Like a predator learning caution, expecting his prey to flee. But Wren was not prey. She was carved from survival. She was teeth and grace. She did not flinch.

‘Why?’ she whispered again, stepping into him.

His hand trailed up her arm, pausing at her cheek, his palm cradling her face with the reverence of someone who had never been shown tenderness. His eyes devoured her, as though she had undone every wall he’d spent years building. As though she were a miracle made flesh.

‘Because of you, little wolf.’