He spun around and weakly lunged for me. His mouth was open with bloody anger, but no words poured out. He couldn’t speak. And pretty soon he would drown in his own blood. I could see the disgust in his eyes. There was no honor in the way I killed him. Back turned. Distracted. Confused. But I couldn’t be fucked to care. Bhaltair was going to die.
He dropped to the floor. “See you in Hell,” I whispered over his weakening body, and when his cold eyes fluttered closed, I sighed in relief. Finally, he was dead.
“Cypress?” a soft voice called to me. I rushed toward Layne, taking in her injuries with a frown. I couldn’t tell where her blood ended and Bhaltair’s began. She was pale and her lips chapped. Her hair was nothing but tangles, and her clothes were gone. Her thin arms wrapped around herself, and I wanted to kill whoever did this to her. “You came,” she choked out.
“You’re hurt,” I noted.
“I’ll survive.”
“Call the guards,” a voice at my back called. I spun around, temporarily putting our reunion on hold to address the next issue. The doctor was going to be an issue.
“You have two choices,” I told her. “You can let us go, or you can die. I’m not playing games today. He choked to death on his own blood. You can do the same. Or you can get out of the way and live. Which one is it going to be? It makes no difference to me.”
I’d be fine with killing her, fine with letting her walk away. All I wanted at this point was Layne out of here. The doctor stepped toward me. “Take her. You’ve left me quite the gift to play with.”
I followed her gaze to Bhaltair on the floor. I’d done many things in my life, but playing with dead bodies had never been one of them. I picked Layne up, grabbing a blanket off another table when I did it. I wrapped her in it and threw the doctor another look. “Good luck with that.”
“Cypress, how are we getting out of here?”
I smiled at Layne’s soft question. “I made a crack in the wall. We’re going to slip right through it.”
“And then what are we going to do? I don’t want to go back, Cypress. Don’t take me to my parents.”
I picked her up and cradled her to my chest. “We’re going to see the world, Princess.”
Chapter Twenty
The castle didn’t seem as opulent as before. Now when I walked up to the barrier, I didn’t feel excitement or nervousness, the only thing I could feel was dread. “You trust me, Princess?” Cypress asked while squeezing my hand.
Yes. I did. I trusted him with everything I had. He’d saved me. Nursed me back to health. We spent the last three weeks in the forest, coming to terms with my fate in the safety of seclusion. We bathed in the stream, and the moon healed me. The scar on my stomach was barely visible now. I wasn’t sure if it was the magic paste Cypress regularly applied to the scar or if the goddess had something to do with it.
“I do trust you,” I replied with a long, lingering sigh. If it came down to it, my assassin would burn the world down to get to me. So much had changed over the course of the last few weeks, but the only constant was that this love between us was depthless and inevitable. “It’s them I don’t trust,” I then added while nodding toward the barrier. There stood both my parents and their guards.
We made our way to the barrier, and my powers flared to life. I’d struggled to contain them the stronger I got. One morning, we woke up with vines wrapped around our bodies, binding us to the ground floor of our tent. The only reason I came back was because I needed their assistance binding my powers until I could get a better hang of it. I didn’t like the idea of restricting myself, but I needed to learn how to manage this and slowly wean myself off the barrier so I didn’t hurt the person I loved.
“Layne,” my mother said. There was moisture in her eyes, and she trembled while holding her hands to her stomach. It looked like she was forcing herself not to run out and wrap me up in a hug. I pulled my lips into a thin line and then turned my attention to my father. He stood stoically at my mother’s side and eyed me with apprehension. The last time we’d seen each other, Cypress and I were saving his life. We got the threat out of our kingdom.
I wanted their help. Needed it, even. But I was going to put some conditions on this. “I’m not being locked in the basement in a dungeon. I need your help. But not as a prisoner. Not even an exalted one. A prison is a prison, and I’m done with them.”
My father nodded. “It’s harder. But anything for you. Anything at all.”
He was giving me what I wanted. And I understood why it was so much tougher. He didn’t have my power. Doing anything for as long as he was going to have to temper me must be incredibly draining. But that didn't mean I was going to sit in a dungeon to make it easier for him. I was a person. His daughter. I needed to be treated like that and not as though I had to be locked up.
“Your Majesties, I wish to speak to you.” Cypress strutted forward. I turned my head. What was he doing? He hadn’t told me he was going to speak to them about anything.
I touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Better than okay. Go rest. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He did like to tell me what to do. And sometimes I liked to
