The Bell of Freedom (King and human romance)✔

Chapter Seventeen

I must have fallen asleep on the way back to the palace because I wake up hours later in an empty bed in my empty room. It's a couple of hours before dawn and the only sound is from the birds tweeting outside my window from the nearby treetops. I stretch my arms as I go into the bathroom, giving out a small yawn as I glimpse myself in the mirror.

Cain was right, I am paler. My skin is still a darker shade of olive but it's not the same colour as it was yesterday. My cheeks are not flushed pink, my bones feel frailer and easily breakable. My eyes are becoming a different shade of blue too, they were bright yesterday but now they are a strange combination of greenly-blue, as though Cain's colour is transferring into them.

And even though I've just slept most of the night, I'm exhausted. I wash my face in the sink and brush my teeth. When I emerge back into the bedroom, I open the tube of vitamin tablets and I take one down with a sip of water.

Arabella's death hits me when I take a seat in the corner. Cain was very conflicted about it, it was like he waited until the last second, until he had no choice. But he did. He did have a choice. He could have let her kill me, he could have let me go to the place I was supposed to, but he couldn't. He killed someone he had known for thousands of years to protect me. It makes me question just how far he's willing to go to consume his completed soul, to become the most powerful being in existence; though to me, he is already.

Will he still stand against the council when they return with questions about Arabella's disappearance? Will he lie or tell them what really happened? Do they even have the power to do anything about it?

I know that his blade can kill his species, but could it kill him? Or has he consumed too many completed souls to die, just like Saffron?

These questions spin around my mind for hours. I don't have the answers and I might be dead before I ever could. I start thinking about our time in the sky, how terrified I was, but how incredible it actually felt to be something other than human for a short time. I wonder if he's ever taken his other girls on a journey like that. Or any human. I place a finger to my lips as I remember our kiss on the beach. Everything about it was wrong, both of us knew we had crossed a line, just like the other morning against the window. Whatever I feel for him isn't real, it's a parasite imbedded into my blood, bleeding me dry of everything I've ever believed.

He is going to kill me. That is his purpose, that is his true nature. I tell myself that over and over, and even when I am completely convinced that I am back to being afraid of him, my body starts trembling at the thought of being close to him again.

Pathetic, I think to myself. My parents would be ashamed of me.

I've given up hope of fighting it. I've given up trying to work out what's real and what's not real. Arabella said that I had to die, that it was the only way. I know that, of course I know that, I just don't know what it actually means anymore.

My thoughts are distracted as I hear the door unlock. I begin to move towards the dining table instinctively, I have no energy to muster a smile for Christian, but I force it out. I am greeted with a running boy that bursts into the room and bolts around the table with wide arms. I am so shocked that I freeze for a second.

"Jackson," I say, holding him tightly to my stomach. "I thought you were coming tomorrow."

"They brought me early," he says. "I missed you so much."

I look over to the door and I see Christian smiling from the doorway. He places the breakfast trays on the table along with a mug of fresh coffee and two glasses of orange juice.

"Thank you," I say.

"I made sure he was safe, none of the guards have touched him," Christian says. "You have the whole day together but I've got to take him back to the slave quarters at six."