Claimed By The Forbidden Crown

ing sound

ath my feet, slow and deliberate, the ki

ge it. Lucien caught the chair behind me before it toppled, and when he turned back, his expression had shed every remaining trace of the controlled patience he had maintaine

ar," he said, "d

to have a conversat

a way that made my name soun

I. What

ng he hadn't found a version of that wouldn't make everything worse. Adrian had moved to the far side of the table with the c

once, warm and slow, like a

he voi

ri

sn't operating by the same rules as the rest of the room. A woman's voice, low and unhurried, with a gentleness to it that made the hair along

around mine before I

the specific quality of someone repeating something they

you bot

en to me b

e didn't. The mark brightened between our joined hands, throwing silver light across the floorboards, and I watche

it?" I

n't k

uinely terri

want about me. Just do

l laugh, like someone who had heard that particul

s things from

dropped. "W

ned sharpl

ows slam

rabbed the bookshelf to steady himself. A crack split the floorboards from the western wall toward the center of the room, movin

ransition had no middle - no blur, no darkness, no sensation of moving. Just the

ned, soaked through at the sleeves with blood that wasn't drying. I tried to understand whose blood it was and whether I was hurt, but my body didn't register

was cryi

f her throat that I would have recognized anywhere because I was looking at its twin on my own skin in the mirror every time I breathed. She held h

een her befor

ticular quality of grief that was pressing against the inside of my chest like it was trying to find its way out through my ribs. Yet every part of my body

my hands sa

" she wh

word hanging from his right hand with the looseness of something he had forgotten he was holding.

Lucien'

old bloodlines. His face, down to the scar at his left temple, down to the way he

turned t

you would

d," h

you woul

ed on the sword'

with the weight of something I had been carrying for years

he crossed to her and took both her hands before she could step back, holding them wi

no ch

lways a cho

fore she learned anything else. And watching her say it did something to me that I could not explain and did not want to examine,

t like

of the burning room, and I thought about every choice I had never watched anyone make for m

," she whispere

lose yo

trembled aga

lready

ene co

rabbed the front of his coat and held on because the vision had left me with no working relationship between my brain and

you see?

om. A woman with this mark on her throat. She was begging you to save

or of someone receiving news t

s she?"

don

You went pale before I finished describing her." I held his gaz

ng enough that Adrian lo

"is the reason the crown has been locked

been reading when the windows blew open, the one with the crown illustration on its facing page - had new writing o

ned c

NOT REMEMBER

e formed as though the writer had alm

HE ONLY ONE WHO