even if it was true love . . . why would Celestine give me that? Why would she make that the thing that woke me?”
“Maybe she was lying,” Finnegan said. “Maybe it was something else.”
“But then what was it? Luck?” She rested her chin on her knees. “I guess it fits. It makes things seem so simple. The good savior, awoken by true love, letting everyone live happily ever after. People can imagine I will save them without imagining me doing anything at all. And then when it isn’t true love, when it doesn’t all fit together, it’s so easy to imagine me as the villain instead. Because I’m not really a person to them. I’m just a piece of the story.” She twisted her body so that she half faced him, her knees colliding with his. She strained to make out his expression in the dark. “Do you remember that rebel in the dungeons, back in Petrichor?” she said. “Tristan. I’m sure Nettle told you all about him.” Still Finnegan did not speak. “I thought I liked him,” she said. “I thought he was my friend, because . . . because he was kind to me, and joked with me, and was far from the castle and all that I was supposed to be. But it’s like . . . it’s like I made him up inside my head. In reality, he was quite different from what I thought. He wanted to use me, like all the rest.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“No,” she said. “I hated you when I met you.” So arrogant, so confident, so certain he knew everything about her. “It’s nicer, thinking you hate someone and then realizing they’re not so bad after all.”
“Not so bad?” he said. “You’re too kind to me, Rora.”
She knocked him with her shoulder, making him sway backward. “I’m being serious, Finnegan,” she said. “I don’t—I know you. There are no illusions there.” It was too easy to be honest, here in the dark, where she couldn’t see his expression, where her knee pressed against his and their hands clutched together.
Finnegan was not her true love. He had climbed those dusty, winding stairs, and he had pressed his lips against hers while she slept, hoping that their future love would awaken her. And Fate had rejected him. He was not her hero, not the man to rescue her.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t choose him. The thought shivered through her, all the possibilities that Finnegan presented. Nothing promised, nothing fated. Just them.
Now Finnegan looked away, staring out into the sky. Was he looking at the redness too? Could he make out the dragons, right on the edge of the world?
Tomorrow, those dragons would come under her control. A betrayal of Alyssinia, perhaps, to help their enemy . . . or a betrayal of King John, the man she hated anyway. That power, that fire, would be hers. If she wanted, she could take the kingdom for her own.
Until someone came to overthrow her. Until their distrust burned into rebellion again.
“I’m glad I get to be the enemy,” she said. Her voice scratched her throat. “I never wanted the throne. I don’t want to rule them.”
Finnegan looked back at her, and she could feel his eyes burning into hers, despite the dark. “Then what do you want?”
This, she thought, but that was one truth too far, one simple word that could not escape, even in the darkness. “I don’t know,” she said instead. “I just know—I’ve spent my whole life letting people tell me who I have to be. And they hate me anyway. I want space to be myself. To do things for me.”
“You’ll have it,” Finnegan said. “When this is over, you’ll do whatever you want to do.”
She found herself nodding. Her free hand clutched the dragon pendant, that simple, unexpected gift. “Finnegan . . .” She lingered on the word, uncertain what she wanted to say next, uncertain if there was anything to say. She shifted on the ground and found her thigh pressing against his. She dropped the necklace, dropped her hand onto his leg.
Everything she wanted was so impossible, so indistinct, fire and life and adventure, dreams half-formed and always far away. That, and Finnegan. Impossible, wonderful, untrustworthy Finnegan, someone she knew so little about but couldn’t avoid, couldn’t stop thinking about or being near, someone who made thrills run across her skin every time he looked at her. She shouldn’t like him, she knew