Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

M y strangled whisper sounds in the cold silence. "How is this happening?" I cast a panicked glance at the room. "Is this my price?"

He gives a labored shake of his head. "When your heart broke, I broke," he says.

The echo is so quiet now that I can hardly hear it.

"But it's stopped." My throat constricts around my protest. "My heart stopped breaking."

He shakes his head and coughs. "Has it?"

It's the first time since we entered the room that he has asked me a question.

I'm not compelled to answer, but I know the truth.

My heart has broken more every time I've looked at him since. Not because I was reminded of my mother's death. It was because I lost the keeper as a result of it.

How cruel that my grief at losing the man I thought he was will be the reason I will lose him now?

I whisper, answering honestly, "My heart kept breaking."

As I speak, the fa?ade the keeper wears peels away.

His green eyes, silver hair, and broken torso disappear to reveal the beautiful face he used to wear. The one that spoke to my fury and my darkness and brought me comfort.

He has the darkest blue eyes, like the sea that once churned in front of me. Black as night hair that reminds me of the panther's fur, the mantle of a sleek beast. A lean and dangerous body and the voice of a predator.

This is the face he wore when he led me down to a beach for the first time and gave me the gift of the beautiful night sky. The face he wore when he burned the horizon with fierce lightning and told me I was a beautiful darkness.

But with the change in his appearance, his wounds only worsen.

This is my price.

Knowing the cost of my heartbreak.

Cuts appear across his arms while crimson blood seeps through the black material now covering his legs, soaking through so badly that it's impossible to ignore. Another gash appears on his face, this one across his jaw.

I remember when I asked him to take off his green-eyed form, and he told me he couldn't, and I thought he was making a willful and defiant choice.

"I'm dying," he says, and before I can process my shock, he lifts his left hand from his lap, his forefinger outstretched.

The black crown rests on it.

Oh, the number of times its power called to me and now he's holding it out to me.

Offering it to me.

"This crown must be claimed," he says. "Its power must be contained and controlled."

But even as he extends his hand, a new fury rises within me. "That crown is keeping you alive. I've sensed it."

I've also sensed the growing nothingness around him.

I've heard the awful silence, as if his heart had stopped beating and he had already ceased to exist.

"That crown is yours," I say. "And you will keep it."

His eyes are glassy, dull, and increasingly unfocused. "I can't." He pushes his hand toward me. "You must take it now."

"No."

In response to my denial, a new tone enters his voice that makes me shiver. "The power you control… you haven't even asked about it…"

He's mentioned it twice without explaining it, except to make it clear that it's dangerous and unwanted and connected to the metal in my mother's heart.

Maybe I should have asked.

Or maybe, like so many dark things about my life, I should not. Because power, of itself, is not important.

It is the choices of the wielder that matter.

Another protest rests on my lips, but that's when it dawns on me that the echo has stopped. But why would it stop unless…

Unless…

He is already dead.

"You can't die here," I snarl at him, my teeth sharpening, my fear making me angry. "That's a rule. No death."

How dare he? Doesn't he realize that if he dies, I can't take my vengeance against him? I can't punish him for hiding his wounds from me, or for keeping his true thoughts from me, or for trying to manipulate me into becoming something other than what I am?

Even as those furious thoughts rage through my mind, there is another that takes over.

I can't lose him.

I may not have the full picture of what happened between him and my mother, but his story is far more complex than I ever could have imagined.

"No," I say to him, a command. "You will not die. Not until I'm finished with you."

I slide forward, wrapping my arms around his bloody torso, inhaling the dark scent of his skin, tasting the copper scent of blood in the air.

He doesn't fight me, leaning into my embrace, his head lowering to my shoulder.

His left hand presses to my chest, the crown-shaped ring cold against my skin.

So is he. Freezing cold .

His lips are turning blue and his breath is frosting in the air.

"Take the crown," he whispers. "Take it before it's too late."

Again, I prepare to rebuke him, but the room's echo bursts into life, such a sudden influx of noise that I flinch.

" Take the crown ," it commands me. " Make it yours. Mold the living to match your will. Fight the old and find the new. Take control of the light and the ? — "

I scream back at the room. "Fuck you! I'll take the crown when I'm good and ready. Not when you want me to take it. Fuck you, you fucking fucker! "

Then I lower my head to Emil, whispering, "Fuck you, too, whoever you really are. Whatever your name really is. Fuck you for breaking my heart and keeping secrets from me and thinking you can die on me before I'm finished with you." I gasp for breath as tears threaten to choke me. " Fuck you ."

He nods against my neck.

His skin is so cold where he touches me that I'm shivering and trying to produce enough body heat to stay warm.

"Temptation," he whispers, his voice trailing off. "What will you do now, Darkness?"

A growl leaves my lips. "I'll fuck with temptation, too."

My declaration falls into silence.

The room is quiet.

It takes me a moment to realize… Emil is quiet, too.

I try to see his face, suddenly aware of how heavy his head has become where it rests on my shoulder.

"Emil?" I press my hand to his cheek. "Keeper?"

My eyes widen when he slides slowly forward, and it takes all of my strength to hold on to him.

"Keeper!"

His head tips back. His eyes are closed and his breath no longer frosts the air.

No.

"No," I cry. "You can't be gone! You owe me revenge. Keeper !"

My scream tears the air around me, but he doesn't respond.