Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(68)

“Are you going to come down from there or am I going to have to come up and get you?”

My heart jumped in my chest at the deep stroke of his familiar voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought that would be obvious.”

I clutched the branches and leaned down to call to him. “You should have let me go, Fowler. I didn’t want you to follow me.”

“I gathered that, seeing how you tricked me into drinking a sleeping draft.”

I batted back the niggle of guilt over that. “I wouldn’t have had to do that if you’d just let me go.”

“Luna, come down here so—”

“No!”

With a curse, he grabbed onto the tree and started to climb up.

“What are you doing?” I cried.

“You won’t come down to talk to me, so I’m coming up.” The tree shook with his weight and movement.

“You can’t make me go back with you, Fowler,” I said as he came to a stop on the branch across from me.

I braced myself, prepared for his argument. Instead, he circled the back of my neck, leaned forward, and covered my lips with his. The familiar scent of him overwhelmed me, heady and male with that undercurrent of wind and woods.

My heart lurched to my throat. He kissed me long and hard. There was punishment in it, but also something desperate and needy. I felt its echo run through me.

When we finally broke apart, I breathed in the changing air. I felt dizzy and more confused than ever. Air crashed from my lips like I had run a great distance.

Turning my head sideways, I softly uttered, “Midlight is gone.”

“I know,” he replied.

I dipped my head, hoping it somehow lessened his impact on me. He couldn’t stare directly at my face, and his mouth wouldn’t be so close, the memory of his taste beckoning me in that hairbreadth of space between us.

“Fowler,” I began. “Think about all these girls dying. Because of me.”

“Not because of you,” he returned. “Because of a madman.”

“But if he had me, the killing would stop.”

“You can’t be sure of that. He kills all the time. Indiscriminately. That’s what he does.”

I angled my head, mulling over his words. There was an edge to his voice I had never heard before.

“I can’t go with you. I can’t leave Relhok while this is happening.” I winced at the volume of my voice. I lowered it to say, “I won’t be able to live with myself.”

“And what about me? Us?” He hated to ask the question. I could hear that in his voice. He hated that need. He hated exposing that vulnerability in himself.

A lump rose in my throat. “You’ll go on without me. To Allu.” I stopped to swallow again, fighting back that lump. “You’ll find other people. Good people and you will—”

“No,” he bit out, almost as though he sensed I was intimating that someday he would find someone else to love. “You can’t go. You don’t know. You don’t understand—”

“What? What don’t I understand, Fowler?”

“You don’t understand what kind of man my father is!”

I jerked as though slapped. Everything inside of me repelled away from him. My spine arched. Another fingernail split from the pressure of my grip.

His father. Father. The word reverberated through me and my stomach twisted. I pressed a hand to my belly and swallowed back the bile. “Your father?”

I felt him nod. His clothing rustled and a branch groaned as he shifted closer to me, his voice a feverish rush. “Don’t look like that, Luna. It’s not—”

“The high chancellor . . . Cullan . . . he is your father? The king?”

“Yes. But I left. Two years ago—”

“Your father killed my parents.” The truth washed over me awfully and settled like poison in my stomach, curdling there. I pressed a hand to my mouth, certain I was going to be sick.

I peeled back my fingers to choke, “When you found out who I was back in Ortley . . . why didn’t you tell me then?” My voice sounded alarmingly calm to my ears despite all that I was feeling. It felt like the person closest to me in the world had just perished with all the unfairness of a vicious and sudden death. I was left grieving, sick to my stomach, and bewildered.

“I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to do what you’re doing now.”

“Which is what, Fowler?”

“Looking the way you do. Like you think I’m a part of him,” he snapped, his voice fierce and raw. A curse followed and I heard the flutter of his hair as he dragged a hand through it.

“You are,” I whispered, working my lips, trying to suddenly rid the taste of him from me. My eyes stung and I blinked them rapidly, shaking my head. “You’re his son.”

A new sound rose, penetrating over the murmuring wind. We stopped. Not a word. Not a move. I couldn’t even hear Fowler breathing beside me anymore.

The swamp stirred, the wet ground shifting, bubbling like soup in a pot.

Fowler whispered my name in warning. Squelching sounds gurgled under us.

I nodded and bit my lip to cut off all sound. I didn’t need to see to know what was happening. Dwellers were waking, rousing in the swampy ground.