Page 37 of Flesh & Divinity

That's enough. For now. That's enough.

I tell them about my plan to claim the throne before dawn.

I expected Jaq and Gus to riot, to fight me on claiming something that they believe to be theirs, but they didn’t. All they asked was to be by my side and help me fight. Duke was silent for most of it. When he finally voiced his concern, I nearly broke.

He isn’t worried about being king or who gets the crown, all he is worried about is becoming a dirty secret. That will never happen.

I’ll sit my ass on that throne with the fucking crown on my head and announce to everybody that the three of them belong to me. If any of them have a problem with that, they will face my wrath.

I’m tired of being the bitch who is hidden and forced to work under tyrants. No longer will I allow anyone to silence me.

These three are ready to sacrifice everything for me and I’m inclined to believe them. My heart belongs to them. It’s theirs to break like glass if they should choose. They have shown me I am more than what Ava, Shannon and Rena said about me. I am a queen. I am their someone and their belief in me is all I need to find the strength to get the fuck off this island and take down their father and my cunt of a stepmother.

“We need to get off this island,” I say. The waterfall fills the silence around my words. “My father told me the night before he died that the king would come for me. I thought he was talking out of his ass.” He told me how the island worked. I thought it was useless information until now. “He said the six kingdoms hold the key to dissolve the island. Dissolve it. Every sentence. Every collar. Every prisoner on this rock, gone. I am one of the six kingdoms now.”

Jaq goes very still across the cave.

Gus lifts his head from the fur.

Duke stops pacing. He has been pacing since I started talking, the way he does when something is restructuring itself inside him and his body needs to keep moving or he'll come apart. He goes absolutely motionless.

“You've known this since before you arrived here,” Duke says. Not an accusation. Quieter than an accusation. More dangerous.

“Yes,” I say. “I didn't know it mattered until now.”

The cave breathes around us.

“We need the other five heirs,” Jaq states.

I look at him for a long moment. At all three of them. At the men who chained me and hated me, and somewhere in the middle of all that ruin managed to show me what it feels like to be held by someone who isn't afraid of how much space I take up.

God, I am so deep in this.

“I think I know someone who can get us off this island so we can find the other heirs.”

Gus sits up fully. “Who?”

“I believe the one you call Island Rat is the one who knows how to escape this place.”

“Why do you think that?” Jaq presses.

“She told me she was trying to save me. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling that girl holds a lot more power over this island than you and the others think, and that's what makes her dangerous.”

Bless me Father for I have sinned. I don’t plan to stop. It’s not in my DNA. All I ask is you help me find the other heirs so I can get the fuck off this rock and destroy my stepsiblings and the cunt I call stepmother.