enjoyebooks CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 45
POV: Rosemary
I don’t wait for Henry’s next step. The moment his eyes lock onto the shadows where I’m hiding, instinct overtakes thought—I turn and sprint down the corridor.
My boots slam against the stone floor, every heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Move. Move now.
The air feels thick, closing in around me as I race through the twisting labyrinth. I don’t dare look back. I already know he’s following; his footsteps echo like a second pulse, faster than they should be.
Magic strengthens him.
Fear strengthens me.
“ROSEMARY,” his voice calls, low and unnervingly calm, “you’re only delaying the inevitable.”
I grit my teeth and shove my shoulder against a turning wall, breath sharp in my throat. “Not today,” I mutter.
I reach the stairwell that leads up toward the disguised entrance. The torches flicker as I sprint past them, my hand grazing the wall to keep balance. My lungs burn. My legs protest. But adrenaline makes me weightless.
“Don’t be afraid,” Henry’s voice floats upward from the darkness below. “I’m not going to kill you.”
That only makes me run faster.
I burst through the narrow crack in the wall into the archive’s side room, nearly tripping on loose stones. Sunlight—blessed, warm—cuts across the dusty floor. I dash toward it, toward the exit, toward air that isn’t poisoned by him.
Almost. Almost there.
But shadows move faster than breath.
A hand grabs my arm and slams me back against the exterior wall of the archive. My sword is half drawn before I even see him, but Henry traps my wrist effortlessly. His strength isn’t natural—it slides through his muscles like dark water.
His face is inches from mine.
“Impressive,” he says softly.
I gasp for air, chest heaving. “Let. Go.”
He doesn’t.
He studies me—not with wrath, not with mockery, but with something unsettlingly analytical. His eyes seem to peel back my armor and search for the woman beneath.
“You’re quicker than I expected,” he murmurs. “Most knights would freeze after seeing what you saw.”
“I don’t freeze,” I snap. “I fight.”
“Do you?” His lips curl faintly. “Because I saw you run.”
“I ran to protect the kingdom.” My wrist throbs under his grip, but I don’t look away. “You’re a danger that needs to be reported.”
He leans closer, voice dropping into a near whisper. “If I wanted danger, Rosemary, you would already be lying dead at my feet.”
My stomach tightens. He’s right. The thought burns.
“Then why didn’t you?” I ask.
His expression shifts—just barely—but enough for me to see something fractured beneath it.
“Because,” he says slowly, “you are not my enemy. Not unless you make yourself one.”
“You threatened my king. You manipulated a child. You killed—”
“I killed no one,” he interrupts sharply. “Your precious Alexandro leapt in front of a spell meant for someone else. Do not lay his death at my feet. Lay it at Sebastian’s.”
My jaw clenches. “You speak of blame the way cowards speak of storms. As if they don’t cause the rain.”
For a moment, Henry’s eyes flare. Not with anger—with emotion so raw it stuns me into silence.
“Everything I do,” he says, voice trembling at the edges, “every ounce of power I wield… is for her.”
Cordelia.
He doesn’t say her name, but I feel it hanging in the air like perfume.
“She was not the monster you believe,” he whispers. “She was driven mad by a curse she didn’t choose, abandoned by a king who swore to love her. Her death shattered her… and I felt every piece break inside me.”
A chill slips down my spine. I have trained myself to despise Henry—to see him as a villain. But his voice, ragged and desperate, cracks something in me. Just a little.
“Love,” he continues, “turns sane men into beasts. Into soldiers. Into ghosts.” His grip tightens for the briefest second. “Into avengers.”
I glare at him, though something inside me trembles. “Revenge isn’t love.”
“No,” he agrees. “But it is what remains when love is stolen.”
His words strike a place in my chest I didn’t know was tender.
Henry looks away for a moment, jaw tight. “If you stay out of my path, Rosemary, you will not be harmed. I am not interested in killing knights. Or queens. Or children. Only one man owes me blood.”
“Sebastian,” I whisper.
He looks back at me. “Sebastian.”
“You’ll have to go through me first.”
The faintest glimmer of amusement passes over his face. “Brave. Foolish. Admirable.”
He releases my wrist suddenly. My breath catches as his hand falls away.
I stagger back half a step, sword lifting automatically—though I’m not sure if I intend to strike or shield myself. He raises one brow, unthreatened.
“Do not follow me,” he says. “Do not interfere again. You saw the path I walk. It is lined with graves. Walk it with me, and yours will join them.”
“And if I don’t?”
His voice turns cold. “Then I will spare you the first time. Not the second.”
We stand in silence—only our breathing between us.
I study him, really study him. The shadows under his eyes, the grief carved into the lines of his mouth, the madness that clings to him like a cloak but doesn’t fully smother the remnants of a man who once cared deeply. Too deeply.
“Henry,” I say slowly, “you’re going to destroy yourself long before you destroy the king.”
Something cracks in his expression—pain, almost. “Then let me burn. It is all I have left.”
He turns. No spell. No puff of smoke. Just a man walking away into the sunlight, cloak sweeping behind him like a dying flame.
I don’t stop him. I don’t call after him. I stand against the wall, breath unsteady, wrist throbbing faintly, sword finally sliding all the way from my hand as I sink down into the grass.
I should hate him. I do hate him. And yet—
I understand him more than I want to.
“Madman,” I whisper. “Heartbroken madman.”
The wind stirs the grass around me, and I realize my heart is racing—not only from fear.
But from something far more dangerous. Sympathy.
I sit there alone, breathless, shaken, torn between duty and a strange flicker of empathy, as Henry disappears into the horizon.