Page 122 of Ballad of Nightmares

His jaw ticked. “I wasn’t aware you were capable of feeling such hurt.”

Her chest and arms slumped, and she took two steps back. “Me… Like you’re any better.” Her voice was low, hollow, and as she began to walk aimlessly around the cell, Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets and prepared himself for whatever hurt might come next.

“You should have taken the water Rolfe brought down,” Sam said. “Although, you do looklovelycovered in dried blood,” he sneered, his head tilting.

The confident smile broke on her lips before she threw back her head to laugh. “My love… wait until you see me in a crown—Your crown, I should say. I think you’ll come at the sight of it.”

“Good luck finding it,” he said. “I’ve not worn it for centuries.”

“So humble,” she pouted.

“How do you plan on finding it when you’re locked in here?”

Ana stopped pacing long enough to give him a toothy grin that sent her pupils darkening and her chin high. “Oh, Samarius…” she said, dragging out his name in a taunting breath. “You’re going to give me everything I want.”

“Why?”

“Because you want me as your Queen.” She stepped in front of him. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Sam stared at her a long moment. “You should be on your knees begging for forgiveness,” he said.

“For breaking your heart?” She snorted. “Come now, Samarius. You—“

“Why should I trust you enough to give you that crown?” he interrupted her. “You chose your greed over me once. Why would you not do it again?”

Ana shifted again, arms crossing over her chest. “Because, unfortunately, you are Death.” She shook her head, almost laughing at the ceilings, and she sank down to the ground by the bars, her knees pulled into her chest. “Every time someone said that’s who you were, I thought them lying. I thought them full of fairytales and speaking of a creature that could not exist. Because how could such a monster be real?”

No matter how often he’d called himself that word, hearing it from her made his heart constrict. It hurt him to know that she thought of him as that.

Sam turned and grabbed a chair from the shadows, plopping himself in it beside her sitting on the other side of the bars.

“I never thought such a monster could be so beautiful,” she whispered, and there was a pain in her breaking voice.

“Why do you think me a monster?”

An amused huff left her as she looked down at her hands, picking skin from her nail, and he watched as a tear fell down her cheek when she replied, “Because every time I begged Death to take me, I never received an answer,” in a tone barely comprehensible.

Her words hit him like a dagger to the heart. He leaned over his knees toward her, nearly collapsing at the weight of what she’d just said, realizing perhaps the scars on her thighs had not been the full extent of her terror, remembering how she’d begged on her knees over his dead body…

He met her gaze, and his heart broke for her. For his Ana. For every time she’d looked at life and thought the darkness better than the next moment.

“And Ihave,” she managed, voice cracking and high-pitched. “I have pleaded over and over. Every time I was told who I had to be, of the things I would have to do and endure, I got on my knees to beg andbargain. And when my father was taken before me, I asked Death to take me too. Because while I was free of him, I had to do the things he left for me to survive.”

Saliva stuck in Sam’s throat. He couldn’t swallow or move. And he wanted to. He wanted to go to her and take her in his arms. He wanted to hold her and tell her she would never again feel that way. That she did not have to live that life anymore.

She could be free to love and live and be at peace.

“I have bled my body and walked off cliffs,” she continued. “I have endured men’s pleasures when they had no use for me except what was between my legs. I have laid beneath them and pleaded for my knife to slip after I took out their hearts, hoping that blade would come down on me instead…”

“Youareworth living for, Ana,” he finally managed.

“Not as the life I have lived,” she whispered. She locked eyes with him, and his shadows circled around her, almost a comfort, if Death could give such a thing.

“You are a monster, Samarius. But…” she looked down at her wrist, rubbing the tattoo on her skin that he had put there. “But you’re my beautiful monster. And I…” She pushed her hand into her hair, moving it off her face as she seemed to laugh at herself in disbelief. “I have always been in love with Death…” she whispered, meeting his gaze. “I just didn’t know it was you.”

Sam held her gaze.

He swallowed at the words she said and how she said them, his clammy hands rubbing together as he carefully spoke.