Minutes later, I screw my eyelids shut against the sound of crashing and gunfire. An explosion tells me she’s taken her retribution. Tears stream down my cheeks.Damn it, Orisa.Lungs burning, I run faster. No point in getting myself killed now. I refuse to waste her sacrifice.
So much loss, it makes me sick.
Kenton. Cata. My guards. Thousands of Auralians.
Lorcan, probably.
Zosia…no. She can’t be dead. For several of reasons. Her life is of paramount importance to the country.
The night of the invasion, Lorcan got his head bashed in while trying to buy time for me and Zosia to make it to the safety of Covari Village. We heard the rockslide he caused, and went back to find him badly injured with a head wound. I did what I could to stabilize his condition. Honestly, his chances of survival even then were almost nonexistent.
We took him to the Sun Temple, where Saskaya, the new leader of the Covari tribe after her sister Cata’s death, was trying to shut down the rampaging Sentinels she’d spent her whole life reconstructing. Four people lugging his prone form on a handheld stretcher through a war zone. It’s a good thing he’s no giant, like Bashir.
Likely, also dead.
No one has heard from Zosia, the Auralian princess, or her father, the king, since that night.
We should’ve stayed in Scotland.
Three weeks ago we were students at Royals University. The biggest things I had to worry about were my grades in biology; not getting assassinated, which wasn’t terribly difficult to avoid considering how Royals was basically a protective fortress for the children of global elites; and keeping my crush on Lorcan under control.
It’s been obvious for a year now that he was never going to date me, much less marry me. That wasbeforeI overheard him and Zosia promising to wait for one another.
It hurts, I’ll grant you that. But it’s nothing I didn’t already know, deep down. Lorcan has always loved Zosia. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see what motivated him, even though it was right there in front of my face. Now that I do, the inevitable feels right.
Looking back, I know why they kept their feelings for one another secret. They didn’t act on them so as not to offend me.
And I feel lost.
Foolish. Stupid. I got in their way.
Now, it might be too late for them to be together. I’ll never live down the guilt of costing them their one chance at happiness together.
The way Scarlett and Kenton will never get a chance to be together again. I’ll never forget the devastation on her face the night we left. Her anguished sob when I called her with the news of his death will echo in my memory until the day I die.
As though any of that matters, now. What matters is getting to Oceanside and figuring out a plan to fight back, instead of taking loss after loss the way we have been. I know how to use weapons, thanks to Lorcan. I can defend myself in a pinch. Yet, as a princess of Auralia’s secondary tribe, the Myseci, I was never meant to fight like this.
I’m not meant to lead this country. That’s Zosia’s job. She should be safe with Saskaya’s people in Covari Village, but when Lorcan was injured she stepped up to play hero.
All I know is that there were three pirates with dirt bikes waiting for us at the bottom of Marsh Hollow. Raghnall’s assistants took them out quickly. There were two dirt bikes, without keys, hidden behind a rock.
Zosia was gone. Presumably, with the third bike and the missing keys.
Leading danger away, so we could get Lorcan to safety. She loved him enough to risk her country for him, knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t come back to her the same man he’d been before. I tried to warn her, but it was her decision.
There’s a strong likelihood that whatever they had before his injury might be best they’ll get. I tried to tell Zosia that night. She made her choice—and now, no one knows where she is.
If she were alive, she would have called. Found a way to send word.
But there’s been nothing. No sign of Auralia’s last hereditary monarch. If she lives, the populace will fight. If she doesn’t…
It’s a void I can’t fill. No one can. Zosia’s role is unique and irreplaceable. We need her. Until we know for sure, I have to do as much as I can to save this country we all love.
I owe them a second chance, if there’s any possibility of one.
When we placed Lorcan’s body on the bed of the Sun Temple’s secret bunker that night, I stuck a needle in his arm and gave him blood straight from my arm. My blood type is O negative. I can give blood to anyone, not that it mattered for Lorcan. He’s AB positive. He can accept blood from anyone. It’s not the first time that particular quirk of physiology has saved his life.
We all gave blood that night. Saskaya, Raghnall, and both of his assistants. It didn’t matter what it took. We needed him to live.
