Immortal Reign(14)

Auranians worshipped the goddess of fire and air, so one would think they would favor the Paelsian burial ritual. But rich Auranians favored coffins chiseled from marble, while those of lower status chose wooden boxes.

“Kurtis had me buried like an Auranian peasant,” Magnus muttered.

Surely, this had to be the former kingsliege’s final insult.

To take his mind off of the horror of being buried alive and utterly helpless, he imagined how he would kill Lord Kurtis Cirillo. After much consideration, he thought a Kraeshian torture technique he’d heard of involving slowly peeling off all the prisoner’s skin sounded quite satisfying.

He’d also heard of burying a victim in the ground up to their neck, then covering them with tree syrup and allowing a nest of hungry beetles to consume them slowly.

That would be nice.

Or perhaps Magnus would remove Kurtis’s remaining hand. Saw it off slowly with a dull knife. Or a spoon.

Yes, a spoon.

The imagined sound of Kurtis’s screams helped Magnus shift his thoughts from his own situation. But these distractions rarely lasted long.

Magnus thought he heard the distant echo of thunder. The only other sound was his own heartbeat—fast at first, but now much slower. And his breath—labored gasping when he’d struggled in the beginning, but now quiet. Shallow.

I’m going to die.

Kurtis would finally get his vengeance. And such a death he’d chosen for his worst enemy. One in which Magnus had plenty of time to think about his life, his choices, his mistakes, his regrets.

Memories of ice mazes and sculptures carved out of chunks of snow in the shadow of the Limerian palace.

Of a younger sister he’d foolishly pined for, who’d then looked at him with horror and disgust and ran away with immortal pretty boys and fire monsters.

Of a beautiful golden princess who rightfully despised him. Whose blue-green eyes held only hate for so long that he didn’t remember precisely when her gaze had softened.

This princess who didn’t push him away when he kissed her. Instead, she kissed him back with a passion that very nearly matched his own.

Perhaps I’m only fantasizing all of it, he thought. I helped my father destroy her life. She should celebrate my death.

Still, he allowed himself to fantasize about Cleo.

His light. His hope. His wife. His love.

In one fantasy, Magnus married her again, not in a crumbling ruin of a temple and under duress, but in a meadow filled with beautiful flowering trees and lush green grass.

Beautiful flowering trees and lush green grass? he thought. What irrelevant nonsense fills my mind?

He much preferred the ice and snow of Limeros.

Didn’t he?

Magnus allowed himself to remember the princess’s rare smiles, her joyful laugh, and, mostly amusingly, the sharp way she’d look at him when he constantly said something to annoy her.

He thought about her hair—always a distraction to him when she wore it down, long golden waves over her shoulders and down to her waist. He remembered the silky brush of it during their wedding tour when he’d kissed her, which had happened only because of the cheering crowd’s demands—a kiss he’d despised only because he’d liked it so much.

Their next kiss in Lady Sophia’s Limerian villa had struck like a bolt of lightning. It had frightened him, although he’d never admit such a thing out loud. It was the moment he knew that, if he let her, this girl would destroy him.

And then, when he’d found her in that small cottage in the center of a snowstorm, after he’d thought her dead and gone . . . and he’d realized how much she meant to him.

That kiss hadn’t ended nearly as swiftly as the others.

That kiss had marked the end of the life he’d known before and the beginning of another.

When he learned she was cursed like her mother by a vengeful witch, to die in childbirth, his selfish desires for her had ground to an abrupt halt. He would not risk her life for any reason. And together they would find a way to break this hateful curse.

But Lord Kurtis had been yet another curse cast upon them.

Magnus remembered the threats Kurtis had whispered to him while chained up and unable to tear the former kingsliege apart. Threats of what he would do to Cleo when Magnus couldn’t protect her.

Dark, nightmarish atrocities that Magnus wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemy.

Panic swelled within him as these thoughts brought him back to stark reality. His heart pounded, and he strained to break free of this small, stifling prison deep underground.

“I’m here!” he yelled. “I’m down here!”

He yelled it over and over till his throat felt as if he’d swallowed a dozen knives, but nothing happened. No one came for him.

After cursing the goddess he’d long since stopped believing in, he began to bargain with her.

“Delay my death, Valoria,” he growled. “Let me out of here, and let me kill Kurtis before he harms her. Then you can take my life any way you wish to.”

But, just like his yells for help, his prayers went unanswered.

“Damn you!” He slammed his fist against the top of the coffin so hard that a splinter of wood wedged into his skin.

He let out a roar, one filled with pain and frustration and fear.

He’d never felt so helpless. So useless. So incredibly—

Wait . . .