He takes a sniff. "Trying to kill me, Estela?" he murmurs. Then he leans forward, so incredibly close to me that the warmth of his skin leeches into mine. The fear retreats the closer he gets. A familiar lick of fire lights up my insides. His eyes are unreadable, but somehow, I know he is furious. The first time he's truly been irateat me.
"Nice try," he says. "You must do better than poison if you are really so eager to get rid of me.”
I try to move and his tail wraps around my waist, pulling me close. “I made a mistake.”
“Agreeing to marry me or trying to kill me?” He bares his teeth.
I take a deep breath. “Both.”
He laughs, and the people around us disperse, as if they can sense his ugly emotions mounting. “Yes, the second you walked into this mountain you should’ve known I couldn’t let you go. But you humans don’t have gifts from your gods. Do you know what you were about to do?”
Heat fans across my skin. I’ve never seen him so careless with his words.
He takes my hand. “My star, the reason you are so drawn to me, the reason you war within yourself at my touch is because we are destined to be together.” He tilts his long, thick neck to the side and reveals a small glowing mark. “This is a mating mark. You are my mate.”
My eyes go wide. Ever since Arlet told me about them, I didn’t believe it would be me.
“You just tried to kill your mate. By the laws of our people, that is punishable by death,” he says, his voice low enough that no one would hear.
“I don’t accept you as my mate,” I say.
He shakes his head. “As if that would change any of this. Come.”
Sweat beads all over my body. I cower back as he pulls me to my feet, and fixes a fake smile on his face.
We hurry from the feast hall, and he waves away a few who try to approach. I gasp for breath and ask, “Are you going to kill me?”
His eyes are stone cold when they look at me. “I haven’t decided yet.”
After he brings me back to my suite, the one with a tunnel connecting our rooms, he releases me. I move backwards, looking for something, any solid surface to hold myself up.
He looks down at me with such fury and his hand tightens on his belt. I watch him, shaking.
When he is close enough to reach me with the length of his blade, he stops, and lets his hand fall. “My father would have killed you. He would have hated your human blood, and that you were destined to be mine.”
I look up at him, his face bitter and ravaged with such hurt. I tremble under his attention as he looks to the table where I prepared his poison.
Then his eyes land on one of the shelves. He reaches forward and picks up the necklace he put on my neck earlier today.
Slowly, so slowly, his fist closes and he replaces the jewelry.
When our eyes meet, it’s scalding. “Despite what you believe, I have changed. Perhaps showing you mercy might convince you of that,” he says, and backs away.
“W-will you send someone else to do it for you?” I ask.
He looks at me intently. “No. I will tell no one what you have done. I trust you will afford me the same kindness with Tirin. I have already told those who should know.”
My body doesn’t know how to react, so I stay there, pressed against the wall, frozen as I watch him leave me alone.
I stay there for a long time. Only breaking the spell when I look at the doors that connect our rooms. Something inside of me comes to life. I walk toward them, holding my hand up to touch the space.
Everything that I had thought about the Enduares told me that they would kill me as soon as I arrived. It wasn’t hard to see that the Enduares were gentler toward us than we could have hoped for. Everything I had ever known was wrong. And now… the king had his chance to get rid of me for good, and he let me live.
I don’t know what to make of all the information. It’s too much to understand, but there is something shifting in the depths of my soul.
I am starting to trust him. Ironically, now that he may never trust me again.
Are you on the other side?I say to him through my mind, and wait far too long for an answer that doesn’t come.