Page 36 of Blackheart

Guilt ripped through me for a crime I had not committed.

King Clarke coughed, blood dripping from his nose. He hastily pulled out a black handkerchief, dabbing it away.

He should have resented me. Should have wanted me dead for being there, in her room, after what a Blackheart had done to her. But when the king looked up at me, it was not with hate. It was with shame.

“Come with me, Elora,” King Clarke said, motioning his head towards the open balcony.

Heart thundering, I turned to Riven as if he could save me. He offered an encouraging nod. He’d promised I would be okay, and I had no choice but to believe it.

I followed the king outside.

He gestured for me to sit, and so I did, the frosty wind whipping my hair. He sat with his shoulders curled forward and his lips in a flat line. “Are you cold?”

I was always cold, but it was winter, and there was nothing to be done about it. I tried my best to answer properly. “It is cold outside, Your Grace.” Speaking with such formality was embarrassing. Trista would have cackled to witness it.

Clarke wore simple clothes for a king, a plain white dress shirt and tan pants. I looked like an alley rat in my layered black rags that became looser every winter. I had only bathed because the Nightcastor from the Pearl had required it. Before that, it was only soap and wet rags while standing in the backroom of the tavern.

The king raised his hand, golden light pouring from it. With his Nature, he heated the terrace, making the surrounding air perfectly comfortable.

King Clarke was a Lyonheart, like Lord Dronis, but with royal blood. For the heat alone, I wished so badly to be Lyonhearted.

He offered me a gentle smile. His kindness felt off, as if something terrible was going to happen as soon as I accepted it to be genuine. He removed his crown and plopped it onto a short, gilded table.

“What is your life like in the Waywards?”

I shifted awkwardly. He had me brought all this way to ask aboutthe cage?

I took a deep breath, attempting to formulate an appropriate response that did not include ‘fucking’ and ‘terrible’.

He lay back on his lounge chair, propping his feet atop a beige pillow. “Speak freely, please,” he added.

Well, if the king wished it to be frank, he could have it his way. “It’s a shithole.”

His face twitched with pain, and then disappointment. “And before that?”

I held my hands together in my lap. “Before what?”

His Nature swirled around me, like a bright shimmer painting the air. “What was your life like before the Waywards?”

When I was twelve, my mother ran off with a man, leaving me to fend for myself. She’d told me many times that my father and brothers left us because she and I were Blackhearts, but I was fairly certain she'd been the one to leave. Then, when I was seventeen, a Natureless boy I liked took my maidenhead but refused to marry me because of my Nature. Beyond that, I had worked almost every single day of my life.

“Also terrible.”

“Tell me about it. The beginning to now.”

The past twenty-three winters of misery were not worthy of being discussed with the King of Drakington and the Castivian territory.

I straightened. “Your Grace, is there something I have done? Or something you need? I’m sure my life story is of no genuine interest to you.”

“My name is Clarke, not Grace, and if you have not already heard, I am sick and dying. So please, tell me about before the Waywards, and after.”

It took everything in me not to gape. No one would ever believe this had happened.

I sighed and began telling him every pathetic detail. After all, he’d asked for it, and no one else ever would.

Before long, I was lounging in my chair as well, facing the star-scattered sky and telling the king more than he probably wanted to know. I talked about my mother first, then about how I’d wanted to be an actress at one point, and travel. I mentioned every bully I had encountered in childhood and afterward. I told him my favorite animal was a bladebreather, even though I had never seen one myself. If I ever got the chance to fly on one, I would be okay dying right after. I talked about Luna, and how she had broken my heart worse than any man could when she ran away. I told him about how I loved fashion but hated sewing, and how I hated drinking but loved being drunk.

“That’s a bad habit, you know,” he said.