Maven appears shocked at my sudden confession, but smiles all the same.
"I thought so, Lady Titanos." He says.
I shiver at the use of my new name, one that, it seems, will become permanent until I exchange it for the title of Queen Mareena and the crown and the husband that comes with it.
I can feel Cal's eyes boring a hole into the back of my head as Maven calls a guard a down.
"Let her out." Maven commands in a cold, authoritative voice. He sounds every bit a King. Only the foolish grin splitting his face gives him away.
As the guard, a magnetron, easily bends the bars of my prison into a wide oval for me to step through, I attempt to return Maven's hopeful smile, only to fail at it miserably.
The guard throws a hateful glance in my direction. "Can we torture her, Your Highness?" He snarls.
Maven seems taken aback by the guard's boldness, and his expression hardens.
"On the contrary, Officer Howell, you will bow to her, for she shall be the Queen of Norta no sooner than tomorrow."
The guard's eyes widen and he bows so deeply it's almost comical. "Your Highness. Please forgive me."
I blatantly ignore the guard. My stomach wriths uncomfortably at Maven's words. The wedding is tomorrow?
"Come, Mareena." Maven's voice snaps me out of my trance. "It's quite late. I'll show you to our chambers."
The way that he said "our chambers" doesn't make my stomach feel any better, but, nonetheless, I follow King Maven out of the dungeons, leaving Cal and my old self behind for good.
It seems crazy to imagine that I walked into these dungeons a criminal, and ran out a Queen.
●●●
"No way, Mare. I'm not letting you out of my sight in case you decide to try something."
I watched Maven, sleeping beside me, his hair artfully messy and his expression one of purr tranquility, despite recent events.
One jolt could stop his heart.
Trying to fall asleep next to a murderer was about as easy as it sounds, but eventually sheer exhaustion got the better of me and I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
I am in a cell with four walls made of glittering diamondglass. As soon as I realize that I was trapped, I slam my hands and body against the walls, attempting in vain to break through the walls of my prison.
"It is futile," Elara's voice sounds in my mind, repeating the same words that Gisa had said when all of this trouble had started, "Diamondglass is totally impregnable."
"What do you want with me?" I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
Elara simply ignors me, a cruel smile forming on her lips. "Once you told me that you could see blood on my hands, Mare Barrow. Well, you were right: but I have learned to live with it. Can you live with it, Mare? Can you live with the blood on your hands?"
At her words, red and silver blood alike lapped at my heels, flowing from some invisible source in the diamondglass cube, staining my ankles. A scream escapes my lips.
"Colonel Macanthos." Elara says.
The mixture of silver and red blood rises to my waist.
"Belicos Lerolan."
With each name of a person who's death I am responsible for, the blood rises a level, until I am neck - deep in death, gasping for air.
With my limited air supply, I screamed for Cal to save me. A part of me knew that it was so unfair of me, to scream for him to rescue me once again when all I've done is use him. But I knew that he would. He will always choose me.
And, sure enough, his sillouhette appeared on the other side of one of the diamondglass walls. I breathed a sigh of relief and, despite the blood rising around me, my face split in a smile.
But when Cal turned his head to face me, I was staring not into the kind red-gold eyes of Cal, but into the cold blue ones of King Maven Merandus Calore, Flame of the North. I was staring into the eyes of a monster.
And then the blood closes over my head, and I drown.
I wake up in a cold sweat, gasping, with Maven's name on my lips and red blood beneath my fingernails from clenching my hands into fists in my sleep. I gasp and clutch at my throat, as if the blood of the people I murdered is still choking me. And it is.
I tremble beneath my soaked sheets, eyes squeezed tightly shut, my entire body humming with electricity as I fight to keep my lightning at bay.
And then a pair of arms wrap around and pull me into an embrace as warm as glowing embers.
I gasp at the heat, but the warmth quickly becomes comforting and tears well up in my eyes.
"Mare, it was just a nightmare. You're safe."
It's not until Maven says this that I realize that I'm sobbing and clutching his shirt like it's some sort of lifeline.
For once I know how Maven felt when he was grabbing my hand through the bars of my cell. I don't want him to leave me. I don't want to lose him.
And he doesn't. Maven rubs my back in small circles and sings me the song that Cal and I danced to that midnight so long ago. Before I can ask him how he knows this song, I'm out like a candle.
