Layne. The moon wept for me. So much pain.
Yes, but it was mine to endure. Pain was my birthright. I’d finally come to understand.
People around me cried out to stop me. Cypress argued. I glanced at him for the briefest of moments. We locked gazes for half a second. I poured love and light into him. I shared a lifetime of affections with one simple look. We wouldn’t get forever, but I’d treasure the brief flash of freedom he offered me.
And then the pain started. I didn’t wait for Bhaltair to agree to my terms. I sent my sleep power out over the room. I poured exhaustion into the kingdom like I’d been doing it my entire life. The sun bomb was nothing like the erupting volcanic agony coursing through me now. It was like the intense power was ripping me apart. I wasn’t capable of handling such intense abilities.
Bodies dropped around me. Cypress cried. My mother screamed, then slipped into unconsciousness. One by one, everyone passed out.
Everyone but me and Bhaltair. He stared at me as he dropped my unconscious love onto the floor. I stared at Cypress. He breathed. That was all that mattered to me right now.
Bhaltair held out his hand. “You pull anything now, I’ll send a thousand assassins to kill them in their sleep.”
I took his hand like a child would when they were being punished. “Let’s get this over with.”
I was going home. It was where I’d spent my whole life. I was a princess, but it turned out I would forever be a prison princess, never meant for the life outside the walls.
Cypress…
A voice called me toward consciousness. It wasn’t one I knew, and yet it insisted I needed to wake up. I wrenched my eyes open. Where the hell was I? Looking around, I didn’t recognize my surroundings. There were a ton of people around, some of them sleeping, some of them dead. My former colleagues who were members of the Assassins Guild were among them. What the hell was going on?
Cypress...hear me.
I jolted. There was that voice again. What was it? Where was it coming from? Who had that voice?
Cypress...remember.
I had one second to realize I was hearing the person—or being—in my head before memories flooded me. Every second of the last weeks hit me all at once. I cried out, hitting the ground as I rolled around in pain. Layne’s power was a palpable, strong surge, and to undo it required just as equal a hit. The voice? Yeah...that was her fucking moon. I grabbed my head.
Forget her? No, I wouldn’t. The moon wouldn’t allow it, and damn it, I would have remembered. I loved that woman. That crazy, stubborn, brave woman who had just sacrificed everything for me. No, I wouldn’t allow it.
The second the dizziness passed, I jumped to my feet. “They can’t all forget her.” I didn’t know if the moon could hear me or not. “They can’t not know who she is or what she did.”
I hoped that she heard me and she gave them back their memories too. Only, I couldn’t wait to see if they did get them back. First, I had to kill Bhaltair, and then I was getting my girl back. There wasn’t a prison who could keep her from me. Not in this world or any other one.
Chapter Eighteen
It was getting a bit redundant. I was back in a cell. Back to my loneliness. Back to being a vessel of power to someone who was greedy. I missed the moon. I missed the buzz of life at the tip of my fingers. But most of all? I missed Cypress.
I craved him on this real level. Before he had saved me from here, loneliness was just a side effect of my existence. And now it was my distraction. Solitude seemed amplified by my depression; I wanted nothing more than to feel the sensation of someone else’s skin against mine to remind myself that I wasn’t alone.
Some things had changed, though. My guards were now stationed two at a time. I wasn’t allowed out of my cell for meals. They didn’t even let me go to the bathhouse anymore. Someone just dumped water on me in the mornings before handing me a pile of mush. I thought that I had a little freedom before, but now this cell was the only thing I was allowed to see. As long as I was breathing, I was a vessel. Rights and human decency no longer mattered.
I missed the sound of the moon in my ears, the way my power rode my skin. I missed being annoyed, being allowed to have a temper. I missed the general sensation of having a life. Now I had an existence. There was a huge difference between the two.
A small mouse ran into my cell, and I smiled. I’d seen him around over the years. He was sort of like a pet inside of these walls. Some of the prisoners played with him. He didn’t visit me very often, so this was a little bit of a treat. Small helpings of moments like this would be my life from now on.
Seconds, minutes, hours and days all blended into one another. At first I felt resigned to my fate, but as time grew and stretched and thinned, so did my patience. Prison taught me to be scrappy and resilient. Even though this place was draining me of my abilities, I hadn’t completely given up hope yet. I didn’t need the moon or earth’s divine magic.
I needed my lifetime of knowledge accumulated from living here. I was going to get out of here. I was going to survive.
My plan was simple. I spent days thinking and preparing. I wanted to kill Bhaltair or die trying, and there were only a few ways I knew of to get him here.
I was his weakness. He
