The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King

The Nightfire was so bright now, I couldn’t see anything but her face.

It was all her. Deadly and stu

We remained there, locked together, both panting. Just like it had been in the Kejari. Like fighting a mirror.

“You’re holding back,” she said.

A throb in my chest, in the ghost of a wound that didn’t exist.

I smiled. “So are you,” I said, completing our script. I leaned closer, close enough that my lips almost touched her ear—and for a moment the urge to skim my teeth along her earlobe, to press my mouth against her throat, was overwhelming. The scent of her, stronger than ever now, made it hard to focus.

“You’re dying to kill me,” I murmured. “So what the fuck are you waiting for?”

I didn’t move, but I felt the cold press of her blade to my chest—stinging where the tip threatened to break skin. I pulled back just enough to look at her, our foreheads touching. Her eyes, big and round as the moon, stared into mine.

Sometimes, I felt like I knew Oraya better than anyone I had ever met. Sometimes, she was the most confounding mystery. Now, she was both—her hidden pain so obvious, and yet her trembling grip around her blade a question that I didn’t know how to answer.

A trickle of blood ran down the center of my abdomen.

Oraya’s breath, shaky and quick, mingled with mine.

“Well?” I rasped. “Are you going to kill me, princess?”

I really wanted to know. Maybe tonight would finally be the night.

Oraya didn’t speak. Her teeth gritted, mouth snarling. The flames encircled us like a lover’s embrace.

Another drip of blood down my chest.

But she didn’t move.

She wouldn’t do it.

She wouldn’t do it.

This truth hit me with sudden certainty. A confirmation of something that honestly confused me.

Because Oraya did have every reason to kill me.

For the briefest moment, her rage gave way to something else, something she closed her eyes and looked away to avoid showing me, but I grabbed her chin and tilted her head back to me.

My mouth opened.

—And then blood spattered over my face, as Oraya jolted, an arrow now lodged in her flesh.