For the first time, I start to detest the rules.
“Weak stomach, Grimshaw?” I tighten my grip around the knife at my plate, considering its many uses.
His cocky grin doesn’t reach his eyes. “We all have our weaknesses, Oro. I’m counting on them.”
Weaknesses.
If only he knew how weak I feel right now.
The rest of the dinner passes in a blur. Afterward, I stand in my room in front of the mirror. Wincing, I peel off my shirt, tensing when I see my reflection.
The gray-blue has spread. It snakes down my arm, almost covering it entirely.
I’m dying.
No one knows it but me and my friends. Only they know the truth: This is not just another chance to end the curses ... it is our island’slastchance for survival.
Which is why I allow myself to do something foolish. I slip my shirt back on, and head into the hall.
I barely tap on the door before it opens a crack and Grimshaw slips through it, into the corridor. He leans against the stone wall, affecting boredom. By now, I’m well acquainted with most of Grim’s posturing.
“Looking for a bedtime story, King?”
I dismiss the barb. “Why are you here?” It’s one thing to have invited him; it was another for him to accept. He must know that we will all rush to kill him to fulfill the prophecy, once the first fifty days are over.
So why come? What does he want?
Instead of answering me, he tilts his head, and says, “You invited me ... so you must have figured out I didn’t spin the curses. You must believe me now.” I remember that day. The hurt in his eyes. When I didn’t believe him. His voice is unnervingly calm, but I see a flash of that same hurt now. It’s gone with a blink. “So why, Oro, do you still hate me?”
It’s a fair question, I suppose. At first, I hated him for everything he and his realm had done during the war.
Now I hate him because I blame him for the curses—whether he directly spun them or not.I blame him. I trusted him, I let him in, I let him out of his cell, and this is what it all led to.
I hate him because, the eve before the curses, I had hope, for the first time in many years, that the future could be bright. That we couldwork together toward a greater world. Peace, between our realms, for the first time in millennia.
Instead, we were plunged into utter darkness.
And I blame him.
“I don’t believe for a second that you are here for innocent reasons. That you are here simply to break the curses. I think you’re plotting against me. I think you are here to cause us all even more ruin. Of course I hate you.” He just looks at me. He does not deny any of my theories and that, I think, is telling. “So, I ask again. Why are you here?”
“I have my reasons, of course. Not that I owe you any of them.”
He turns back toward his room, but I’m not finished. I block his path with a wall of towering flames. He turns slowly, annoyed.
“The Wildling.” My words catch him off guard. He stills.Interesting.
“What about the Wildling?” he asks. His words have a hard edge. Why? He saved her from the cliff. He stopped her from eating the heart. I didn’t miss the shadow of relief on her face after it was taken away. He must have sensed her discomfort, with his power.
Why would he care?
“You’re interested in her.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Who wouldn’t be?”
It isn’t a direct answer. He’s being deliberately evasive ... as if he knows about my flair. He never guessed at it before. Or did he? Now I wonder if all my questions in the cell made it obvious. If he knew then ... why was he so forthcoming?
“Why are you here?” I ask again.
