The south wing.
Oredison Palace, Gazda.
The Battle.

The palace was in utter disarray. We stuck mostly to the hidden passages and servants entrances, but as the destruction I'd caused grew, it became more and more difficult. Kai had suggested that Caine might be in the war room on the western side of the palace, so we headed in that direction.

The explosion I'd caused inside the library had completely torn apart one half of the palace. The blast had taken out chunks of wall and large pieces of the floor. It had completely collapsed the servant's stairwell and had disabled the lifts on that end. This left us with a choice: we either needed to backtrack and try to use a different servants' entrance, or we could try to use the regular stairs.

I leaned towards the second choice, since it wouldn't take as much time to get up the main stairwell as it would to backtrack through the passageways. By the time we'd reached the hypothetical second servants' passage way, we could already be where we needed to go.

Since I was allied with Darragh, I would most likely be fine if we ran into his troops—I was fairly well known by now. However, most of Darragh and Haniver's troops saw Kai as an enemy and they would treat him that way. The same could be said for me if we ran into Erydian army. Caine's soldiers probably wouldn't hurt Kai, but they'd shoot me without hesitation.

We were both equally at risk.

The fighting up ahead of us was louder than it had been in any other area, which I took as a good sign. We'd have to go one way or the other, but, when I turned to go towards the door and the main stairs, Kai balked. "Monroe—" he caught my wrist and pulled me back into the shadows of the passageway. "Slow down. Wait a second."

I tried to tug away from him but he held firm. "We're almost there," I argued.

"There could be soldiers—"

"Good goddess, Kai, stop trying to control me."

He let go of my wrist as if I'd burned him. "I'm not. I swear I'm not. I just—" He leaned around the corner, checking to make sure the hallway was empty. "If we go up the main stairs, we could risk—"

"It's two sets of stairs and one landing, Kai. We can risk that much. Two sets of stairs, one landing, and a hallway—and then we've got him."

"That isn't a plan, Monroe. He'll have soldiers and weapons we don't have. If he's in the war room, he won't be alone. He'll be heavily guarded and armed." He shook his head. "We can't go against Caine with only your knife."

"I have my ability too."

He lifted his gaze heavenward as if begging for patience. "Monroe—"

"Trust me."

Up until that moment, he'd followed me without question, giving me directions and letting me decide when we moved and when he waited. And I knew, just seeing how he was looking at me, that he would follow me no matter where I went. But I was putting him at risk too. This wasn't just my life. And he was right, he was unarmed and I held only a knife.

"I..." I swallowed and looked towards the fire blazing further down the hall. It cut us off from the majority of the fighting, but I would be able to move it aside for us when we were ready to head that way. Worry gnawed at my insides. "When Jax offered me a gun earlier, I didn't take it. We only had a certain amount of them and I wanted Nadia or someone to have it. I figured I wouldn't need it."

"You don't need it. I know you can protect yourself with just your ability. You've always been a force to be reckoned with. I, on the other hand, am not as intimidating without a weapon. And I think if we aren't careful, we'll end up in a situation with Caine."

I heard what he didn't say. If we aren't careful we could end up in a situation like what happened on Sauenmyde. Kai had been weaponless then too. He'd done whatever he needed to do to protect me and it had cost us, all of us. That had ended with he and I both imprisoned and me the whipping girl for all of his indiscretions.

The desire to retreat was a palpable thing. It lingered in the air between us, heavy and frightening. "I can handle it," I said. "If we can get to Caine then we can stop the fighting. We can use him the way he's used all of us. And Darragh will see that you aren't a threat and—"

Kai cut me off. "I know you don't like to follow orders. I get it. But this...this is one time when I need you to listen to me. Please. If you never listen to another word I say, listen to this: We do not know what is in the war room. We don't even know if we can make it up there. Caine could be dead or captured already. You are hell bent on putting yourself in danger so that you can prove my innocence to Darragh, but I'm—Monroe, I am not innocent."

"I can't watch them kill you."

"Yes, well, you weren't supposed to be here to see it."

The words were like a slap in the face. They were a stark reminder of what Cohen had said to me about Kai not needing to be worried about me when he died. I stepped back from him, putting some space between his body and mine. I turned to look at the main stairwell.

There was no one on the landing or anywhere in sight. But he was right. We didn't know what lay on the floors above us.

Kai's face softened. "Let's go back towards the kitchens—"

"No."

"The kitchens will be safer. No soldiers will bother being down there. If we go now, it's possible we can meet up with one of your contacts or Darragh and—"

"I'm not ready!" The words burst from me, my voice pitched high with terror. "I'm not ready to face it. I can't—What if they kill—Kai, I can't."

He closed his eyes for just the briefest moments. "Oh, love."

I hated the pain in his voice, the regret. I hated that he was the reason I felt both. "What if they won't listen to me? What if—What if they—?" I couldn't finish.

I knew what would happen then. I would burn and burn and burn. Until there was nothing left of me. And there would be an odd peace in that. To become ash and smoke and flame.

Hot tears welled in my eyes and I tried to blink them away. "My heart can't take it, Kai. I can't see anyone else die—"

"Presenting Caine as an offering to Darragh won't make a difference. I would be giving him something he was already going to take for himself. And it wouldn't change the mistakes and choices I've made. I will still be king. I will still..." He shook his head. "Listen, I'm going to go back down the servant tunnels and see if I can make it to the kitchens. I will not give you an order, because I know you won't listen to me. But I want you to go with me. Desperately. I'd do anything to get you to go with me. Please let me get you out of this." He was staring at me, waiting. "Please, love, come with me."

I clenched my fists at my side and I felt the fire in the corridor beyond the main staircase rise in response. "Fine. I'll burn this part, so no one can come down this way after us."

He nodded. "All right."

***

At some point we started to run. The noise of the palace was changing around us, turning from yelling and screaming to an odd sort of creaking. Like the palace was a massive beast digesting, settling, preparing to feast again.

Things crashed on the levels above us. Each new sound had Kai hurrying his step. He was taller than I was and I struggled to match his pace. It didn't help that I was trembling from exhaustion. My ability was a pulsing wound, a frayed nerve. I found that it was difficult to do anything more than stroke the existing flames. Creation was beyond me, as if every last spark had been used up on other things—killing the priestess in the library, holding onto Arden's lanterns, lighting the explosives, sparking the chemicals in the servants' stairwell, clearing the flames from our path. I was a wisp of smoke. A vapor.

But I would not dissipate. Kai's hold on my hand was weighty, tight like a vice, as if he knew just out weak I truly felt. If it were up to him, we would have stopped to rest, but his desires (and mine) came secondary to the pressing heat of our surroundings. The palace was breaking around us, shattering into a million tiny pieces. If something from a higher floor fell through and blocked out path, we would be stuck.

All of my bravado from earlier about how I was goddess-touched and could use my ability was gone as adrenaline was replaced with bone weariness. I needed to stop. Needed to catch my breath. I started to pull Kai to a halt in one of the hallways, my breathing coming in ragged inhale and exhales, but he tugged me onward.

We made it to the bottom of the one set of servants' stairs and came to a stop. The landing split into two sections, a stairwell going towards the kitchen or a door heading out onto the main level of the palace where the ballroom, throne room, and royal dining room were. The stairs that would take us to the kitchens were completely gone, blown up or burned away, I wasn't sure. Either way, we couldn't go down that way and it was too far down for us to try to jump.

Not that Kai wasn't considering it. He was still gaging the distance and the debris at the bottom, when I moved towards the main hallway. The door was off it's hinges and had fallen to one side. I heard Kai start to follow me, but I was too busy trying not to trip over fallen boards and debris, that I didn't see what he did.

"Monroe!"

It was at that moment that I stumbled directly into an Erydian soldier. The barrel of his gun touched my chest for a split second before Kai caught my shoulder and hauled me backward, nearly pushing me towards the missing stairs in his effort to shield me.

The King of Erydia lifted his hands, palms out. "Steady, soldier. We—We aren't—"

The man spoke through gritted teeth. "Shut the hell up!"

Kai and I recognized him just as I did—Igell. The guard Caine had assigned to me all those months ago.

"Igell, thank the goddess!" The relief in Kai's voice sent chills down my spine. "I was looking for a guard. Do you know where my uncle is? I'm taking her to him."

"Move away from her."

"She should have a trial." Kai said, the words coming out with more certainty than I thought possible given our present situation. "If you kill her now, Caine will be furious. He wants her. You know he does."

"She's a traitor."

"Yes," Kai nodded quickly, "She is. And my uncle will want to do with her as he sees fit. What happens to her is at my discretion, and his."

Kai's hand snaked behind him. I tensed as his fingers ran up the length of my thigh, shifting the torn fabric of my dress and slipping against my bare flesh. Before I could understand what he was doing or get past the fact that he was touching me, he had pulled my knife from it's sheath.

I let out a little surprised cry as he turned and yanked me forward, pressing the blade to my throat. "Kai?" The fear and surprise I felt were genuine.

"Shut up." His hand found my throat and squeezed, pulling me up onto my toes with the force of his hold. "I'm tired of fooling around with you. It's exhausting. You're exhausting." He looked to the soldiers. "I've got her under control, see?" Igell stood there for a moment, staring at Kai. When he didn't step aside, Kai shook me, my teeth clacking in my skull as he asked, "Caine won't want to be kept waiting. Not when she's here. Where is my uncle? Better yet," he said, his fingers digging into my neck. "Where is my wife? She'd love nothing more than to have a go at this bitch."

My breath was coming in gasps and I tried to wiggle out of Kai's grip. The knife dug into the skin at the base of my throat and his callouses held me with enough strength to bruise. My hand tightened against his wrist, trying and failing to get away.

"Let—Let me go!"

"Where is my uncle?" Kai asked again, his attention fully on Igell.

Panic settled heavy in my chest. "I can't breathe." I kicked Kai in the shin and he hissed through his teeth in pain, but he didn't let me go. "Please—Plea—Kai!" My fingernails dug into his skin and I stretched up as far as I could, trying and failing to to get a full breath of air. "I can't—I can't brea—"

"Where is my uncle? I will not ask you again." Something in Kai's tone must have conveyed how serious he was, because Igell blanched. The knife was there, pressing, insistent. I whimpered. "If you don't start talking and she doesn't stop swarming, I'll gut her right here and now and do us all a favor. But then—But then Caine will gut you for making him miss out on the pleasure of killing her himself. And all because you're standing in the damn way."

"He's...He's in the ballroom. He's barricaded himself inside. He's got the Warwick boy and one of the goddess-touched girls with him."

The Warwick boy.

Kai's grip on me loosened a bit in surprise. He recovered quickly enough, tightening his choke hold on me. I was pushed towards towards the door to the hallway, his legs nudging mine forward none too gently.

In an instant, his hand left my throat and cold oxygen shocked my system. I gripped the wall to steady myself. Before I could even catch my breath, Kai had pulled my hands behind my back and had me pressed face-first into the nearest wall.

He leaned in close, his mouth near my ear, his voice muffled by my own wheezing inhales. "Goddess, I'm sorry."

I tried to speak, tried to say anything, but the words wouldn't come. My eyes burned with fear and relief and...something vile. Something that felt a bit too much like panic. I'd known he hadn't meant it and yet...yet it had hurt. It had felt real.

"Step aside then," Kai ordered, pulling me to stand in front of him, his hands were feather light against my skin now, not holding as much as skimming over my flesh. A quiet plea to play along. "I'll deliver her to him myself," he said.

I knew he was lying. I knew...I knew it was a game. Right? It was a game. Always a game. He...He'd kissed me. He'd said he loved me. Even so, that same creeping sense of fear that I'd had when I'd read his name aloud and declared him king flooded my system once more. As if I were in my body and out of my body all at once.

Bile rose in my throat. "Kai?"

His fingers tensed against my skin, but he didn't respond.

Igell still didn't move out of our way. "You..." the guard shook his head, his gun raising again. His finger twitched against the trigger. I felt Kai hesitate, felt the muscles in his hands and arms tense as he let go of me and pushed his shoulder into mine, knocking me sideways into the wall at our left.

The man's eyes widened and the gun in his hands swiveled towards me. His hand twitched against the trigger. At the same instant, Kai sidestep, putting himself between the gun and me again.

I saw Igell's finger slip against the trigger.

I screamed—a warning, a plea.

Please.

Please don't shoot.

Igell made a little sound of surprise, his eyes going wide, and his hand twitched, loosening on the gun. Kai darted forward, using that second of distraction to try to knock the weapon away. Igell fought him, his eyes almost glazed with terror. In the struggle, the gun went off. Plaster sprayed as the bullet lodged into the wall near where I'd just been.

I heard a familiar female voice curse. "Oh hell no!"

Igell started screaming then, blood-curdling, bone-chilling shrieks. His eyes were bulging from his skill—unseeing as Kai grabbed the gun from his hands. The guard still screamed as Kai's hand fell back, blindly searching for me. I caught his fingers in mine and let him pull me forward, past Igell and out into the hall.

I saw her then.

Heidi.

She didn't look at me at all, her gaze was locked on Igell who still stared into the empty hallway where I'd just be—screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming until there was no sound coming from his throat. Until blood ran in rivulets from his eyes, his nose, his ears. His body went slack and then he was on his knee.

Kai drug me backward a step just as Igell fell face first at our feet, limp. Dead.

"I'm sorry," he said, his face burried in my hair. "I'm so sorry, Monroe. I didn't...I panicked and I didn't know what else to do. I'm sorry. So, so sorry."

I nodded against his shoulder, my entire body still shaking like a leaf, and turned to look at my friend.

For a moment, Heidi didn't move. She stayed frozen. Then those green eyes darted up to me. Her voice was sharp with fury as she yelled, "Where the hell have you been, Benson?"

I pulled back from Kai and lifted my hand, which was still threaded with his.

"I found the king," I said weakly.

***
🔥🔥🔥

Hey, I have a super cool opportunity for you guys. If you head over to my Wattpad Announcements page, you'll read about the Street Team I'm forming and learn how you can get to read an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of the published version of The Culled Crown (now titled Of Cages and Crowns). By joining the Street Team, you will be one of the first people to hear about all things OC&C. You will get to see the cover first, hear any cool news, and be entered into giveaways for awesome book goodies. It's a totally free opportunity and it's a way to help support the series and (if you're feeling extra sassy) help support me too. It's also a way for me to include some readers in the behind-the-scenes of the publishing journey (which was a priority for me—I love y'all). We got the book this far, don't stop now! Go read the announcement on profile and click the link to learn more!

If you enjoyed this chapter, leave this 👑 emoji in the comments and go check the announcement on my profile. Make sure to come back here and comment if you apply! 🔥🧡👑