Page 63 of Fated to the Wicked King

Feeling faint, I was pressed against his chest, his one arm braced beneath my knees, the other securely around my back.

The rising water was already lapping at my body.

His blue eyes were wide as he searched my face in full alarm. His composure had fractured enough that I didn’t even need my empathic senses to tell. His heartbeat hammered too fast, his breathing roughened and uneven beneath the rigid control he was desperately trying to maintain.

“Allie. Allie, don’t. You have to hold on, do you hear me? Stay with me. Stay, stay, stay,” He pressed his forehead against mine. “Please. Tell me what I have to do. I-I don’t know how to help you.” Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he rumbled out a frustrated groan. “Goddammit, tell me how I can help you.”

The water climbed higher until there was no ground left beneath us, only freezing black depths swallowing the chamber inch by inch as we floated amid the grinding machinery.

The cold seeped deeper and deeper into my body until I could no longer feel my fingers or the ache in my feet. Shivering, my eyes shuttered closed again.

“Hold on, Allie.” The king’s grip tightened around me hard enough to hurt, though even he was shaking, his jaw clenched against the cold as he kept us both afloat. “You have to hold on. You can’t die like this. I swear to god—I forbid it. Do you hear me? Not especially when I’m right here, and I still can’t save you. Not when I can’t do anything.”

Those desperate blue eyes kept darting around us for a way out. Our breaths came in ragged bursts that fogged the tiny pocket of air still left above the rising water.

Another surge poured through the ruptured pipes overhead. Water thundered into the chamber from every direction now, climbing mercilessly, and I realized with sudden, terrible clarity that there was nowhere left for the air to go.

“Rabb…” I met his gaze.

His heart still pounding in his chest, the king’s eyes were fixed on me through the dimness—not panicked anymore, but helpless exhaustion, guilt, and remorse.

The water rose to our shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Allie. I’m so sorry.”

The water closed over our chins, our mouths, and then the final pocket of air vanished beneath the freezing flood—just as everything around us exploded in a bluish-white flash.

Confused, I blinked through the freezing water stinging my eyes.

When I looked over at the king submerged beside me, his eyes were also wide.

But the grip of frostbite had risen to my neck. My chest burned, my body desperate beyond thought. I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer.

Right as I was about to inhale the furious frozen water, the cavern emptied, torrents of water spiraling violently downward with a thunderous groan as the flood drained away beneath us.

Barely aware of the king’s tight grip still secure around my body, my woozy vision blurred amidst the strange, glaring white of our surroundings.

“Well, hell’s bells, Allie. There you are,” was all I heard before I succumbed to fatigue and passed out.

Twenty

LION VS. UNICORN

My nose twitched. Warmth spread through my body like a slow, glowing ember catching beneath my skin. Sunlight seeped through my eyelids, though it was an effort to peel them open.

Beside me, the king released a breath of relief and immediately stepped back, his forbidding posture still rigid. His dark figure a sharp contrast against the pale yellow wall with a fresco of a countryside picnic on a fine day.

Chez’s purple eyes were leaning close to my face. “Wakey, wakey.”

Withdrawing her hands from mine, Sophie sat back in her chair beside my bed with a sigh.

The Duchess was across the room, her fan in hand, plumes of fluffy white feathers matching the voluminous layers of her puffy-sleeved white dress. The feathers flapped at her face, rustling her blonde ringlets.

I met her gaze first, noting the crease on her forehead, the pout of displeasure on her lips.

“So let me get this straight.” Her tone terse, she waved the fan vigorously in front of her face. “You lot have been on this side of the river for all of two days, and you did not think to visit me first?”

My attempt to chuckle was hijacked by my dry throat. Trying to swallow, I slowly sat up despite the weight of a mountain pressing down on me.