Page 90 of Castle of the Cursed
“Are you sure?” My voice is barely audible, but Sebastián hears me clearly.
“I used his blood to access the jardín de sangre.” It’s decisive proof Felipe was dosed with Brálaga blood.
I breathe in deeply a few times, tasting winter’s early chill in the air. Felipe was already dying. And my uncle denies being a murderer.
Every part of me is shaking. “Why do this?”
“That is a question for your uncle.” His voice is colder, a little more like the shadow beast from the first night. “How long have you known who I am?”
“Three days,” I admit.
“Since I kissed you.”
Guilt twists my gut, and I nod.
“Why did you keep it from me?”
There’s no point in holding back now. “I didn’t want to let you go.”
He looks unmoved, and I rebound the question. “How long did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That your memories were in my blood.” His expression doesn’t soften, but his chin tips up just a little in surprise. “That’s why you haven’t fed on me again since the first time, isn’t it?” I press.
“I suspected it.”
“Why?”
“When I drank from you, we both saw memories from my childhood. I only had access to that information through your blood.” His eyes darken as the shadows deepen around him. “Yet I sensed that if I recovered those memories, the unburdened version of me—the one you named Sebastián—would cease to be. Like any creature, I was only trying to survive.”
I want to ask if that’s what’s happened now, if Sebastián has ceased to be, but I can’t stomach the answer. So instead I say, “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“I am too much of a monster not to forgive you.”
Yet his expression and tone don’t lighten. This new way he speaks and the heaviness in his gaze are hard to take. Even the particles of air seem to exert weight on his shoulders.
This isn’t my Sebastián. This is Prince Bastian.
“You know what they call me?” he asks.
“The Iron Prince.”
His lips curve up in a cold imitation of his old smile, only this one offers no light. “Then you know I come from a world even your most darkly imaginative artists could not conceive. Sebastián was a lie that could only exist as long as I did not bear the burden of my past.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper. “You can choose to be different.”
“You speak of me as if I were human and capable of your full range of emotions. I am the future king of my kind. I crave power, blood, violence. I do not sacrifice for others—I only sacrifice others.”
“And still you’ve been taking care of me—”
“Because it was in my best interest. But if you are expecting me to do the right thing, I will let you down.”
I sigh in exasperation. “So this is it then? You’re going home and leaving me here?”
“I do not know how to break the spell,” he says, and I wait for him to add that he doesn’t want to leave because I’m here.
But he doesn’t.
