Page 81 of The Last One Standing (Rogue X Ara #4)

ARA

T he past is the past.

It can’t be changed. It can’t be rewritten.

What’s done is done, and he still won’t get what he wants.

I repeated those thoughts, inhaling through my nose until my lungs were full and exhaling as slowly as I could.

If I let it, the emotion threatening to drown me would , then it would reach Rogue, and he’d know. He’d know everything I was and everything we were was a lie.

A trick.

A game.

A means to an end.

Half my life was a means to an end, played by devils with twisted minds and sharp tongues—one devil, but so many unwilling minds affected.

One devil took it upon himself to wield me as a piece in his intricate game of chess against fate.

My heart skipped a beat, wanting to race and break. My breath hitched silently.

It’s done.

I shook my head.

Iaso finished the contract, the ink still wet on the parchment when I turned and left the room.

Calypso had been moved to a table, burned but covered with a sheet. The smell remained, though, and it crawled down my throat.

She wouldn’t heal for at least a day, possibly longer, so I’d resolved myself to a productive distraction.

I had to do something, anything that would occupy my mind and hands.

I snatched a bottle of rum from Iaso’s cabinet before I headed for the library, Rogue on my heels.

He rambled on about resting, sleeping, eating a meal, or even simply talking to him, but I declined and resisted him every step of the way.

Turning the corner, I finally laid eyes on the library.

“What did you see?” Rogue asked.

I slowed to a halt, staring at the grand entrance. Candlelight spilled into the hallway as it flickered over the abundance of books and dust and distraction.

What did I see? My gut churned, mouth filling with saliva as I fought the urge to retch. I popped the lid to the bottle in my hand and tipped it back, swallowing until I needed to breathe again.

Rogue spun me to him and took the bottle with a look of horror.

Good, you should be afraid. You should be terrified. Disgusted.

I moved for the library. “We don’t have much time, and I?—”

He grabbed my hand.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to relive the memories, and I certainly didn’t want to bring them to life by giving them a voice.

“You saw something—something terrible.” With a gentle tug, he pulled me into his chest and tipped my head back, but I kept my stinging eyes on his chest. “Even without the damned blood oath, I can tell.”

It’s done.

Deep inhale in. Slow exhale out.

Adonis wouldn’t get what he wanted.

What he wanted?—

Guilt struck me in the gut again, and Rogue’s chest caved in response. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“We don’t have time,” I said. “I’ll tell you after he’s rotting in the ground.”

Guilt might have slipped through, but nothing else did, and he couldn’t decipher the reason behind it. I couldn’t even admit it to myself, much less to him.

“Ara,” he said, nearly pleading. “There are some things I won’t force from your lips, secrets you’d rather keep buried, atrocities you won’t give a voice to, but then, there’s this. This, you cannot keep to yourself. Not when it involves you, me, and Adonis.”

I flinched at his name.

Rogue straightened, the muscles in his chest rippling as he tensed. “And that is exactly why.”

“You’re right,” I murmured, but my throat closed. My mind oscillated between blinding panic and nothingness—both black. I suffocated in darkness. This time, it was my own, but it hadn’t always been. “You’re right…but I can’t. Not yet. Not now.”

Not ever.

Selfish.

This was beyond selfish, but I couldn’t even meet his eye, much less explain everything, so I slowly, regretfully slipped the bottle from his hand and walked on trembling legs to the library.

He didn’t immediately follow, but his eyes did—his deep concern, too. It weighed in my chest like a stone atop my guilt.

Everything that had happened, everything I’d become, everything we’d become…and I was still as spineless as the day I arrived.

Nothing had changed, and yet, in a matter of minutes, everything had.

I took another long swig from the bottle, grimacing at the burn, as I walked to the back section that terrified me just days ago. I snatched a lantern from a hook on the wall and strode down the aisles with increasing speed.

The shelves created a maze I was determined to lose myself in. I’d lose myself until I stumbled upon what I sought after: that damned room.

I gulped the liquor to stave off the ward or magic or soul, whatever it was that sent cold fear down my spine, and held up the lantern as I skimmed the book spines. The deeper I went, the older the books, the thicker the dust, the staler the air.

I knew that first flashback hadn’t been simply a nightmare—it’d been too real, too random—and I fucking knew the daggers on the cover looked familiar.

My chin quivered, and I forced another deep breath, followed by another long drink.

They looked familiar, because they were.

Because I’d seen them countless times, across the past decade in various forms. On the cover of that book. Painted on a canvas in his dungeon. One strapped to his hip.

My fixation on the dagger while he held me captive made sense now. My soul remembered when my mind didn’t.

Sacrifice, the blade that rendered death, was in the hands of the man who wanted to kill everyone I cared for.

Iaso and Calypso hadn’t known how Sacrifice’s magic worked, but Adonis did, and he took great pleasure in my discomfort at his explanation. He’d explained many things more than once, simply for the pleasure of witnessing my reaction—until he tired of it.

Then, he kept me ignorant for ease and simplicity.

Ignorant.

So fucking ignorant.

I took another gulp.

Sacrifice sliced flesh no differently than any other blade, but whereas normal wounds healed, a blow delivered by Sacrifice would not. They’d never heal, and death would only come in one of two ways: bleeding out or infection.

If the injured wasn’t lucky enough to die by the former, they suffered the latter—unless they faced their inevitable death at their own hand.

And Severance…

Fuck.

The lantern rattled in my trembling hand, moisture blurring my vision. I wiped my face on the shoulder of my sleeve and focused on the titles etched into the spines.

Severance was mine to find when he couldn’t—one of my many tasks.

He spent a full decade visiting me, whispering and scheming and professing his secrets to a child.

I’d been right when I called him lonely. He was lonely, and he sought friendship in me solely because of my use to him and who my father was—the father I never had the chance to meet because of him.

Adonis planned for me to find Severance. He didn’t know when or how, but he said I would. He knew I would.

He’d planned for so many things, all of which had already come to fruition. This would too, but not for his benefit. Not this time.

I took another sip of rum, not bothering to wipe the tear that fell. There was no use when my eyes burned like wildfyre, and his words echoed in my ears.

“ He’s here.” Adon had come to my room the night before my forced engagement. That feline grin stretched across his face, his eyes wide and feral.

He’d been in my bedroom while I slept. I only woke when he tapped my cheek, and I gasped, sitting up and clutching the blanket to my chest.

“He’s in the capital.”

“W-who?” I asked.

His jaw clenched, expression tight before he released a heavy sigh—angry or irritated, I couldn’t tell, but both made sweat break out along my spine.

“It doesn’t matter who.” He sat on the edge of my bed, and my gut sank. I started to inch back toward the headboard, but he sat on my blanket, and I couldn’t have both coverage and space. “All that matters is that tomorrow will be a very big day for you.”

“What does that mean?”

His smile returned as he tapped his finger on the tip of my nose. “Tomorrow is your engagement day, my sweet, little mutt.”

I jerked my face away. “No.”

His smile faded. “Yes.”

My mouth went dry, and I silently pleaded with the Goddess to turn back time and undo my refusal. Sweat rolled down my back, fists balled around the fabric.

“You will not ruin this, do you understand? You will do exactly as you always have: be an insolent thorn in everyone’s side. Throw a fit. Cause a scene. Then, when it’s dark and you’re all alone, you’ll sneak out to the tavern.”

His gaze lowered to my shoulders, to the thin straps of my nightgown, and my eyes stung, cheeks burning, a knot in my throat.

“Why?” I forced out.

“He’s starved…” He lifted his eyes to mine. “For information, and I’ve been careful not to offer him a crumb. He’ll follow the castle workers to where they let off steam, searching for loose lips. That’s where he’ll find you instead, his freshly engaged mate.”

“Who is he? My… fiancé?”

Adon gave me a flat look. “I cannot keep doing this.”

“Doing what? ”

“Explaining everything again and again. Fuck, if you weren’t my only friend, I ? —”

“I’m not.”

He stilled. “What?”

“I am not your friend.”

He blinked once, twice. “Suit yourself.”

A cloud of black nothingness swallowed my skull. That was the last day he ever visited in secret.

Before he left, he planted the idea for the tavern. He ordered me to return to the estate slowly enough for Rogue to follow and leave my window open, so he could see who I was and where I lived—or if Rogue left first, I was to follow him out under the guise of attraction.

“Be a brave girl, and chase him down for a kiss. He’ll take it from there.”

Bile climbed my throat, and I set the bottle down to brace myself on a shelf.

He even knew Iaso placed a curse over my magic, one she’d be able to undo, but he didn’t order me to seek that out. No, he expected it to happen without intervention.

He orchestrated everything.

Every twist and turn in my life. Every choice.

Everything.

My fingers tightened around the wood.

With another sip of rum and a deep inhale, I stood and resumed what I came here to do.