The King Trials 2: Beyond.

I breeze in with brisk haste.

Kelan closes the door whilst giving me a thorough once over. “….Are you cold?”

“You mean this?” I pinch the flap of the hood that’s attached to the oversized cloak. “Not wearing it by choice.”

“When I awoke this morning, completed my on-sea routine. Solaris strode back inside our cabin and gawked at me like I was a stowaway, like he didn’t know me. Only to realise that there was something unrecognisable about me.”

I snatch off the hood. I urgently bring all my coiled tresses to the front in search for the blackened patch. When I find it, I string it all out, the darkened lock that contaminated other strands, now a sheet of my hair is a terrifying black.

“Solaris lent me his cloak.” It even smells of him, if happiness had a smell, quite like a fragrance of a sun-bathed meadow in the summer, sweet with tinges of floral essences.

Alarm frenzies in his eyes as he starts walking backwards, reaching for the door handle. “I know you hold your gripes against Anthia, but perhaps she or her brother can merely examine you, to at least determine what it is that’s inside of you.”

“No—” I lunge for him and latch onto his wrist. Mustering might, I try to heave him towards me. “If Zoar, an immortal with ancient and powerful magic, could not identify it, let alone heal me, neither could they. Even the Kumentah just aloofly referenced to the malignancy like somehow only I can discover… a cure of some sorts.”

He yields and allows me to guide him back. “There must be something I can do—that anyone can do. What if you do not find a worthy remedy—at least not in time?”

Driving earnestness into my words, I say, “I survived plenty, this too I shall overcome,” I say purely to console him. “Besides, I am fortunate enough to have people to live for.”

Those Cimmerian eyes, the crepuscule of night. His gaze grips me as palpable as his own embrace. He pulls me to him and enfolds me, arms roping round my waist. My entire body tingles with awareness, every sense attuned to him, the tempo of my heart synchronising with his, feeling every enrapturing pulse.

“Though you were poisoned by a malignancy that was meant to weaken you. You still prevail. I can only hope to obtain half the strength you possess, even at your weakest.”

My hand roams his chest. Tantalised by the harmony of his reverberating heartbeats. “A strength that you inspire. For you alone are stronger.”

His head leans closer, he buries his face in the crook of my neck. “No.” His breath shudders across my collarbone. “No, I am far from it. The mere thought of any harm befalling you would… destroy me, something I could not live with. And you, my queen, I cannot live without.”

I clench my eyes shut. I peel them open, the eyes of the night staring down at me, utterly under his thrall.

He rests his forehead against my own, his breath ghosts over my lips.

“I cannot promise to a fate that I do not know. But what I can avow to is that I will fight. I will fight for a future I dream of, one that goes beyond the King Trials. A dream to be held by my father once more, to see my sister’s smile and even to hear my mother’s mithering. I long to reunify with my family but what I desire most—”

I incline my head, my mouth nearing his. They graze his warm, plump lips.

He relinquishes himself from me like a beast yanked back by its chain. He looks away, hands balled at his side, the knob in his throat bopping.

“Aurora,” he utters painfully, his voice thick with emotion. “I—”

I lift a hand to silence him. I can endure much—heights of pain that were even unknown to me. But his constant, nebulous refusal is one I cannot bear.

“You do not have to explain yourself.” I twiddle my fingers anxiously, incapable of being still. “I never told you who—what I was as an instrument of manipulation, to force you to disclose your own qualms. I told you the truth because that is what I wanted you to know—everything. But I must ask. Your… reluctance. What you dread, does it have anything to do with me?”

He stares at me, his inner turmoil clear in his eyes, his expression torn, at war with himself with whatever has him conflicted, a choice between unburdening himself or allowing this repressed truth to corrode him from the inside.

He moves forward but retreats like he’s tethered, bound to some oath of secrecy.

“I’m—It’s too dangerous,”

“Have you met me?” My tone slick with cynicism. “You fear danger but what is more perilous that what has lied dormant within me, and because if it, I have a target on my life. The ruler of the hellscapes himself wants my blood spilled. There is no greater danger than the one I already inherited the day I was born.”

He shakes his head resentfully. “You would not understand.” Grimness etches itself on his face, outlining every rough and sharp feature.

Anger spikes in me, hot and out of my control. “What would I not understand?” My fury rising. “Why do you not take your own counsel and start from the beginning?”

His eyes fall on me, his face hardening into an impervious look, deaf to my words. “I thought you said I did not have to explain myself?” A sudden chill frosts over his tone. “It seems you only shared your secret because you thought it would sway me to confess to some dark truth.”

“No, apparently just a ‘dangerous’ one,” I quote. “And do not seek to warp my intentions to divert scrutiny off yourself.”

He stares me down, observing me with upmost stoicism. “Then what was your intention, if not that? What did you seek to gain from revealing your true identity?”

I exhale loudly, bellowing my frustration. “My hope was I offered you a chance to see all parts of me, even ones that I myself do not know in faith that you would do the same. I do not wish to interrogate you, you aresling. I wish to know you! All of you, the good, the bad, and the worst.”

His eyes go vacant, his expression blank—completely unreadable.

I do not know how he manages to do that. To be able to turn off his emotions like they are optional, and assimilate an indifferent disposition as easy as drawing his next breath.

“Be wary of what you wish for.”

My head snaps back at the remark. “I only wish to have you is that so unjust, so difficult for you to understand?”

His response is resigned to silent apathy, his eyes never waver but they lack warmth.

I adopt a neutral tone, forcing my calm. “I came here to show you the oracle, not to argue with you—”

“Yet here you are.”

Alright, I’m done. I storm forward, shouldering past him to reach the door.

“Aurora,” he says lightly, his voice rich with reproach.

“Aurora,” his voice booms, my name filling the room. My hand freezes on the handle. “Do not walk out of that door.”

I slowly swivel to face him. Dumbstruck. “And what is keeping me? Certainly not you, I am exhausted with this push-and-pull. You draw me to you, only to ward me off when I get too close, and your excuse is some vague, irrelevant peril.”

“It is relevant,” his voice like a grumbling thunderhead.

“Not to me, I only care for you but you do not care enough to see that—to trust that whatever it is I would still see you the same, nothing could besmirch my image of you the same that what I have done has not changed your view of me.”

“It is not that simple.” His gaze rejects mine. “Deep down, you know that.”

I bark out a scathing laugh. “No, I know what I know, and I know what I want. You are the only one that does not—confused about what values most to you. Your fears about your qualms or losing me because of them?”

His eyes widen with reckoning. “Is that how you feel?”

He can be so mindbogglingly dense. “Who wouldn’t feel this way? I see a brighter tomorrow, but that future—a daring dream. It will incessantly be under the pall of what you dread in your past. A dream that will only remain just that, if you will not take that leap of faith with me.”

“There is a reason why dreams are regaled to children,” he says with shallow aversion. “Because they are what they have and will always be. A fantasy. Something to amuse but not ever can it be true.”

Tears burn behind my eyes, threatening to blur my vision. I blink them away rapidly. “You care for me,” I say, coming off as a plead for confirmation than assured certainty.

“I never denied it.”

“You care enough to worry about my wellbeing but not enough to take the risk to be with me?”

He folds his arms, his face impassive. “You told me that you chose me, and I warned you—vaguely—about the cost, one I cannot allow you to pay and a danger that not even you can face. It took me a while to accept it. But you still do not see. I was never a choice.”

An ominous pain clenches my chest. “Kelan—” my voice breaks. I clear my throat. “Please. Do not do this.”

He shrugs with baffling nonchalance. “It has already been done.”

A strangled scream escapes me. “One moment, you say you cannot live without me and the next. You’re done with me?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says with equated ire. “I would rather suffer that pain of living without you, then you not living at all—I told you that every decision I make is to protect others, and the same constitutes here. I am not doing what I want, I am doing what I must.”

“Why are you so determined to push me away!” I wail, my voice achieving a new pitch. “You say this secret could endanger me, but you are harming me more than this concealed truth ever could. I do not just want you; I need you. And I lack the strength to just let you go.”

“You do not have to.” His words artic like the sea. Cold resolve settles within him. “Because I will.”

I gape at him, my mouth ajar. “Kelan…”

“Leave me,” he says and turns his back on me.

And this time I do not argue. I draw my hood back on and flee his quarters before my eyes can spill even a drop of tears.