Shifting my weight onto one knee, I looked into her eyes, trying to find a smidge of humanity that she had grown being here so long or the divine qualities she learned she had. There was nothing but black in her eyes—not one spec of purple. Throwing her over my shoulder, I knew staring at her in the cold woods wasn’t going to solve anything. I could stare at her anywhere and accomplish getting nowhere.
Everything seemed more quiet. My mind snapped to Jasper, silencing everything around us, or maybe just Arianna.
She had been through enough: dead parents times three, missing her only living parent, Arcadia, finding out she had powers… and I’d be dumb to leave myself off that pile of problems. I wasn’t the easy road… or the high road.
I was hard to shock, but when I stepped onto the sidewalk, I looked up and saw the gothic old buildings that made Arcadia gone. Well, not gone, but dilapidated and broken. Nothing like the buildings that were in a well-preserved condition only hours ago.
Losing control wasn’t an option as a leader. I had to stay calm and collected.
If for no one but Arianna.
Arcadia was all an illusion, a Pandora’s box, trickery at its best. We were all fooled, even by the smallest lies.
The circle, now less complete, stood in the quad, gasping at how much we believed there were people around us and beautiful buildings holding us captive.
Arcadia was a prison made up of our nightmares. What’s the rest of the world made up of? I continued forward, with or without them, until I reached the iron gates that burned if you touched them for too long. Kicking them open the iron nearly fell apart, displaying a fictional world—one that none know of us had seen in fourteen years.
The real world was full of life. I felt like the four horsemen of the apocalypse coming to destroy everything good, until only I was left standing with Arianna.
I just learned the hardest lesson of all: blood isn’t thicker than anything else. Cheyanne was right all along when she told me, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
I may have been stuck with this circle, forced together as children of gods, as royalty, but I was still the fucking king. The only kingdom I was going to see was a grave for each of my enemies.