Chapter Twenty-Two

C HAPTER T WENTY-TWO

I’m running as fast as possible through the palace’s hidden passageways. I focus only on the thought that Darius is still in the dungeons and that I have to get to him before anything can happen. My feet ache and my emotions tangle along with the pain.

I make it to the dungeons, my burgundy tunic catching the surfaces of the walls and ripping apart as I make it down the steps. It doesn’t matter, though; what matters is that I reach Darius. I raise one of my hands up as I skid around the corner and slam against the wall.

Darius rises to his feet, worry so potent across his features that he stalks towards the bars of his gate in three swift strides. ‘Goldie? What’s wrong?’

I’m panting as I rush over to him. I lift the cups stacked with the dice inside and say between breaths, ‘You said Aurum won’t let you remember.’

He stares at me, his gaze sharpening with concern.

‘Fine, then,’ I say, ‘we will do something different. Something that follows my rules.’

Darius takes in what I am saying with shrewd eyes. ‘And that is?’

‘We play a game of Liars’ Dice.’ I plop myself onto the ground, sitting cross-legged. Darius watches me as I unstack one cup from the other, managing to fit it through the bars of the cell. ‘You know it, right? After all, you are a well-known champion within the shifters.’

Acknowledgement shines in his eyes. Even if he does not intend to play, I have him fascinated by this sudden arrangement. The sounds of what might be happening outside do not reach this far down the dungeons, but that doesn’t make it any less daunting as I rush to set up the game.

My fingers tremble as I drop the dice into my cup, then pass the other five through the bars. Worry gnaws at the back of my mind, believing this is a pointless plan and that all I am doing is endangering everyone else due to the slightest hint of hope inside me from playing this game.

‘We play one round.’ I stare at the dice, concentrating on each black dot. ‘If you win, I let you out of here, and you can go with Aurum.’

‘And if you win?’

I pull back a breath, forcing myself to look up at Darius. When I do, he has already sat down opposite me with the cup in his hand and a gaze that watches me with every intention of devouring me. ‘Then nothing happens.’

He clicks his tongue. ‘Doesn’t seem fair, Goldie.’

‘Yes,’ I answer, lifting my chin. ‘I suppose it does not.’

His brows scrunch together, and I know he must wonder what the endgame is here. ‘All right then, Goldie,’ he says with a slow nod. ‘I’ll play your game.’

Perfect. ‘There is one thing you must know before we start,’ I say as we begin rolling the dice inside our cups. ‘For every time we go to say our numbers, we must ask the other a question, and we must answer it truthfully.’

He keeps his gaze concentrated on me before forcing a slow nod. We both then slam our cups upside down on the ground. I inhale deeply, glancing at the dice hidden beneath.

Darius gestures his hand out towards me and smirks. ‘Ladies first.’

‘Why do you believe you killed Lorcan back at the cottage?’ I jump straight into a heavy question.

Darius’s immediate reaction is nothing, but it’s hard to ignore how his hand tightens around the cup.

He looks at me with reflective gold eyes. ‘It is not a belief when it is what happened.’

Now, my fingers grip the base of the cup with too much force. ‘Three fours.’ I don’t acknowledge his answer. ‘Your turn.’

‘Who gave you that scar?’ He nods at my arm, and I glance down at the injury I once despised wholeheartedly.

‘Lorcan,’ I whisper. But you already knew that from before . ‘We were young. He didn’t know right from wrong.’

Visible anger cuts across Darius’s eyes. The veins along his neck strain from the effort to keep himself from asking more, but the old him, the one who lived a real life, understands why Lorcan did what he did.

‘Four fours.’

He turns his head to the side, and it feels as if there is a knot in my throat, rendering me powerless to speak up. I know that my next question will dip into unknown territories, so all I can offer him is a relaxed breath. ‘If you believe your uncle is a good man,’ I start, ‘then why do you not question as to why he took your powers and controls your very being?’

His gaze comes crashing down on me in a punishing way. ‘He is doing it to protect me.’

Liar , I want to shout, but that is not part of the game. At least not yet, not until one of us believes the other has bid more than what we have.

Frustration curls the sides of my lips into a downward frown. ‘Five fours,’ I clip.

The air around the dungeons is taut, pulling its strings at us as we glance at our dice here and there.

Darius rolls his shoulders back and inhales deeply through his nose. His stare is relentless. ‘Why is it that you want to play this game?’

I tuck my bottom lip between my teeth and think. I already know why I want to play this game, but the whole truth doesn’t come out. Only part of it does. ‘The first time we played this together . . . you took me to the shifter’s den. It is also the first time I realised that hating you was just a fa?ade.’

Darius never stops watching me. Watching me speak, watching how the words form and spill from my lips as if they are magic. His attention makes my heart bubble up with nerves, and then he says, low and raspy, ‘Six fives.’

I tilt my cup just enough to see how many dice I have again. Two fours, three threes. I lift my gaze to Darius’s and take a slow breath. I’m staring at him, mapping out his face so that I can remember it and never forget it, unlike how he forgot me. My lashes flutter against my cheeks as I glance at his hands, and suddenly, an echo of remembrance calls at the back of my mind – a memory of when Darius and I were travelling through the Screaming Forests.

‘Have you ever fallen in love?’ I’d asked Darius after he saved me from the Galgrs.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Frightening.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Love is different for everyone, Goldie. Sometimes, a simple glance is all it takes to fall in love with someone.’

‘I’ve only ever heard that in stories my mother would tell me.’

‘And how did your mother and father fall in love?’

‘On Noctura night, when they were children. My father saw her dancing as the gold dust fell from the sky, and he’s always said since that moment he loved her.’

Darius’s smile from that night flashes across my mind.

‘Well then,’ I had said. ‘How can you know when you’re in love with someone?’

‘When it hurts.’

As I return from the vivid words Darius once spoke to me, my heart stumbles over a beat.

I look up at him, my lips parted, as I try to catch a breath and ask the very question that stops time. ‘When do you know you’re in love?’

He is hit with a barrage of feelings all at once. His brows draw together, and his chest heaves as his attention suddenly shifts to the left. I can tell his head is swirling, trying to process the question I have laid on him.

I wait and wait and wait.

And when he finally looks me in the eye, it is pure agony. ‘When it hurts.’

Hearing those words is both a relief and a blow to the heart. He never says that he remembers or that he recognises the words from that same night, too, and I know that what I am about to say will make me lose. ‘Eight fives,’ I whisper, his eyes closing as if he knew I would bid a higher number.

‘Liar,’ he rasps, disappointment dripping from his deep voice.

We both lift our cups to reveal the amount we have on our dice. He has four fives and two sixes.

I shut my eyes and bite my lower lip before exhaling. ‘You win.’

He doesn’t sound satisfied. ‘I guess I did.’

I put on a brave face as I stand up and force myself to look at him. ‘You’re finally free to go.’ I don’t know where my voice went, but it is no longer here with us. Clearing my throat, I fetch the keys out of my pocket. ‘No need to pick the locks any longer.’

He’s against the cell door now, his jaw cemented tight as I unlock the gate and hold on to the bars, believing that will keep me from wanting to collapse. I keep my concentrated gaze on the key wedged in the lock, sensing as Darius walks out of his cell.

How can you know when you’re in love with someone?

When it hurts.

Pain engulfs me as I clench my eyes, expecting him to have run off now to find Aurum.

But then he says, ‘Nara.’ And I turn.

I hardly have time to take in the look on his face before he’s on me in two quick strides, cupping my face so that his lips are firmly planted on mine.

A strangled noise between a moan and a plea tears through his lips against mine, and I take it. I take everything he is giving me. The soft strokes of his tongue with my own, the gentle touches of his hands in my hair, my back and my heart.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmurs, and I shake my head, kissing him harder. ‘I do remember.’ He nips my lower lip and I let loose a hungerful sigh. ‘I remember everything.’

I do remember.

I remember everything.

His tears hit my face as he clutches my cheeks and kisses me over and over again, whispering in between. ‘I tried,’ he says. ‘I tried so hard not to let you go.’

I don’t know what he means by that, and I don’t bother to ask because all I care about right now is this moment.

‘Please don’t forget me,’ I breathe, my lips over his, as I touch his face, wondering if this is real. ‘Never again.’

He shakes his head, his nose rubbing against mine. ‘Never—’

A slow clap ricochets off the dungeon walls, and I jump back from Darius. Cold dread dampens my back as Darius and I glance to the right, where Aurum and Sarilyn stand side by side, looking at us with the smuggest of grins imaginable.

No, Solaris, please, not now .