Page 62 of Between These Broken Hearts (Cursed Stars #2)

When morning comes, the sun comes with it. The battle and the storm ended late in the night, leaving nothing but carnage and

smoldering fires on the palace lawn.

Misha and I haven’t moved from the tower. We watched the battle from up here, watched as Crissa’s battalion wiped out most

of Mordeus’s legions and made the rest run. We waited through the end of the storm and the rising sun, our friends visiting

to share updates about Hale’s and the queen’s condition every so often. Maybe I should be down in the infirmary with my brother,

but sitting at his bedside holding his hand feels like goodbye , and I refuse to accept any eventuality that doesn’t include another hello .

So I sit in his stead, watching the final flames on the lawn burn down and willing the princess to appear, for the sake of

my brother, for the sake of the shadow queen, for the sake of my friends who fought so hard and deserve something to believe

in.

“Your queen is here,” Misha says, referring to Crissa, who’s been in the palace since helping us defeat Mordeus’s forces.

“What will your brother do if the princess comes back?”

“The same thing he’ll do if she doesn’t,” I say, and I know it’s true. “He’ll love her forever. Elora will have to find another

king.”

He’s quiet for a long time and then surprises me by pulling me into him, wrapping me into his warmth, his strength. “How lucky he is to have a sister who understands and accepts this about him,” he murmurs into my neck.

I turn my head. “Don’t you think Pretha understands you?”

His throat bobs. “I’m the one who didn’t understand her. I didn’t understand how love could overpower duty. Now it’s so clear

that I never should’ve married Amira for the sake of the crown, not when what she and Pretha had was so real, so pure. But

I didn’t understand it then because I’d never...” He releases a slow breath. “I understand it now.”

My insides shimmer with something that could be happiness. One day soon, even. Once we aren’t perched on a rooftop waiting

to see if we have another friend to grieve. “They made it back to each other, though,” I say. “That’s something to celebrate.”

“Indeed it is.” He presses a kiss to my neck.

“And what will you do now that there’s not an immediate threat to your throne?”

His arms tighten around me. “You know what I want to do. What happens next will depend on what you want. Your home realm finally got its revolution. Change is coming.

Maybe that’s where you want to be.” He swallows. “But if you decide you’d like to stay with me, I’d jump at the chance to

prove my love to you.”

“I didn’t tell you.” I spin in his arms and look up at him. His hair’s a mess and his tunic is half untucked. He’s still irresistible

like this, disheveled from a night of wielding unimaginable power to protect a kingdom that isn’t even his own. “I thought

the dream Konner locked me in was an illusion.”

“It wasn’t?”

I shake my head. “No. It was an alternate reality—it was the way life would’ve been if my father had died during his attempt at gaining godlike immortality.”

His face falls. “And you were so happy there. In that dream. Perhaps a life at the palace—”

“Misha, I was in love.”

“You mentioned that,” he rasps.

“Did I tell you who I loved?” I touch my fingertips to his face and smile, soaking in the flickers of hope in his russet eyes. “I was in love

with the Wild Fae king and ready—eager, even—to leave my home and spend my life with him.”

“And what about in this reality? What are you eager for here?”

“The same thing,” I whisper.

He presses his mouth to mine and kisses me hard. Like he’s trying to freeze this moment in time. Like he’s trying to hold

it tight so he can take it with him everywhere. “I love you,” he says against my lips.

“I love you too.”

The scuff of boots on the stairs pulls my attention from Misha.

“Hale, should you be out of bed?”

His knuckles are white as he uses the rail to pull himself up the last few steps. Behind him, the shadow queen follows, her

king consort at her back. Hale and the queen are both still pale, and should be resting, but I know they need to be here even

more than I do.

“Any sign of her?” my brother asks.

I shake my head weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“Word came from beyond the gates,” Abriella says, her voice faint. “General Hargova had a group of Mordeus’s pledges he planned to bring to my dungeons. They’re all gone.”

“They escaped?” Misha asks.

“No,” Hale says. He scans the ground below. “They collapsed. They’re dead.”

“We think Mordeus is gone for good,” Brie says. “We think that they died the moment his spirit was finally completely cut

off from the world of the living.”

I glance toward the fires on the lawn. “So she won? She beat him?”

“We don’t know that,” Brie says. “All we know for sure is that he didn’t survive it.”

“That’s where she stepped into the flames?” Hale asks, nodding toward our hours-long point of focus.

“Yes,” I say.

Hale braces himself on the stone ledge and looks toward the ground, where servants and sentinels deal with the battle’s fallen,

sorting their people from their enemies. His gaze quickly flicks past them and beyond, to where embers of the fire glow hot,

even in the morning sun.

“Even if she didn’t survive, she still saved so many,” I tell him, hand on his arm. “Her sister, the future of this court,

countless others that would’ve been impacted by the ripple effect of Mordeus’s return.”

“She’ll rise,” he says.

Misha and I exchange worried glances. “How do you know?” I ask.

His jaw is hard, his eyes steely. “I just do.”