Page 28 of The Broken Elf King
A flicker of annoyance crossed her features, but she turned it into a radiant smile. “Of course. Hello, Kailani.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Lottie. I hear you like to play chess?” I took a sip of my water, as a dry tickle had formed in my throat.
She nodded, putting the fork into her meat. The king raised a green bean to his lips.
“I do enjoy the mental stimulation,” she said.
A cramp formed in my stomach and all at once fear rushed into me.
Dry throat. Cramps.
The king was just about to bite the tip of the green bean when I stood up so fast that the chair fell backwards. Reaching forward, I ripped the fork from his hand and threw it on the ground. Next I reached for his and Lottie’s plates and tossed both to the floor.
“What the Hades!?” Lottie yelled, and I doubled forward in agony. My throat was on fire, my stomach felt like it was chewing on razor blades, and I knew I was about to die. Lottie seemed to catch on then, standing and screaming, “Poison!” as she fled from the room.
I looked up at the king and there was so much fear and pain on his face that my heart broke for him.
“No,” he breathed, rushing forward to take me into his arms. I felt it then, bleeding from him and into me. All the trauma of watching his family die was coming right back to him. Funny how I was the one dying and yet I was worried about him.
“It’s okay.” I reached up and wiped away a tear that had slid from his eye.
He blinked rapidly, as if shocked that a tear had produced itself, and then he shook his head. Placing one hand on my stomach, he grit his jaw. “Thatbitchwill not take another from me,” he declared.
All at once it was like the stomach cramping and throat burning was pulled out of my body through my navel. The king’s face went red; he started to gag and then he fell backwards.
“Raife!” I screamed, sitting up and throwing myself on top of him. His face was purple as if he couldn’t breathe, and I remembered what he said then. Why he never saved previous people who had been poisoned by Queen Zaphira. It was too hard to know how much poison to take from the person if it was tasteless and odorless. He was presumably supposed to take half, but he’d taken it all—the idiot took every bit of poison from me.
“Why would you do that!?” Tears leaked from my eyes in panic as I beat on his chest. “Give it back. Give it back to me,” I pleaded, grasping his sweaty palms as if I could suck the poison back into my body.
My chest felt tight, my stomach burning; thoughts of impending doom took over me. I knew they were his thoughts, not mine, and I wasn’t shocked when I felt excitement rush through him as well.
He wants to die.Maybe not actively but for the pain to stop, for the waiting to be poisoned by the queen every day. He was excited to leave all that behind, to be done with it and join his family in the heavenly realms.
Something instinctual kicked in and I sat on top of him, my legs straddling his waist, and started to do chest compressions. It might not be some fancy and magical form of elvin healing, but it worked in the human world. If his face was purple, it meant he couldn’t breathe, so I would breathe for him. I would do everything I could to save him because I wasn’t ready to let him go.
Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to his, pinching his nose with my fingers, and exhaled. It was as if lightning hit my spine; an electrical charge ripped through my back and the breath I exhaled into his mouth was… purple. Small bits of it leaked from the seal of his lips despite my best efforts. I gasped, taking some of the purple breath back into my mouth, and that’s when he coughed, the blue color leaving his face, changing into a violent red, and then peach.
He stared at me wide-eyed, chest heaving as I sat atop him, staring down in complete and utter bewilderment.
“You stupid man!” I screamed, pounding his chest. “I thought you were dying!”
He grasped my hand, catching it midair, his gaze slowly hooding over. “I was, and if you don’t get off of me I think my body is about to show you how alive I really feel right now.” He looked down at his crotch and my legs straddled over it and I blushed, throwing myself off of him and to the floor beside him.
He sat up, resting his arms over his knees, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“What happened?” I asked. “You… you shouldn’t have done that. I’m not worth it.”
His life was way more important than mine.
He cast me a long side glance, opened his mouth to speak, and then the doors from the kitchens burst open. It was Mrs. Tirth. “The chef has fled. Lottie said there was poison? Is everyone okay?” She looked frantically from me to the king.
Raife stood, fists balled. “Fled where?” he growled.
Mrs. Tirth swallowed hard. “The gardens, my lord. Minutes ago—”
Raife took off out the dining hall and through the kitchens, seemingly to give chase to the chef who’d just tried to kill us both.
It was at this precise moment that I had a mental breakdown. Sobs wracked my chest as I processed everything that had just happened.
