King of Me (The King Trilogy #3)(30)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

“Yes, but fear not. Just a few more steps…”

In that instant, she grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. I whipped forward and stumbled, but instead of falling onto firm ground, I kept on falling. Down, down, down, screaming every inch of the way until I landed with a splash.

The water was ice cold and deep.

I fought my way to the surface only to find that it offered little more than air. No light. No warmth. Just the faint snicker of Hagne’s voice off in the distance.

“Psycho bitch! He’ll know it was you!” I screamed, but she was long gone. There was just me, the water, and the darkness now. “Who the f**k puts a well in the middle of a dark, goddamned f**king cave!” I yelled. “Really! Jesus H. f**king Christ. You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me!”

Gah! But all the blasphemous cuss words in the world wouldn’t change what was. Me. At the bottom of a well in a goddamned cave.

Treading water, I threw back my head and closed my eyes. The water was cold, but not hypothermia-chilling. I’d drown from exhaustion before anything else. Think, Mia. Think. But my heart raced at a million miles per second. Don’t panic. Panicked people die much faster.

I began to hum “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles—a nervous habit I’d picked up as a kid. To be clear, any Beatles song would generally do, but the aquatic theme felt appropriate.

Ten verses later, my heart rate lowered and my mind began to sort through the options.

There were none.

I wasn’t about to develop super-Spidey abilities and scale the fifty-foot drop. And no one except for psycho-Seer knew where I was.

I’m screwed.

After an hour or so, I came to two conclusions: I would die here like a complete chump, but Hagne would still lose. King knew my secrets, and he would do everything in his power to alter his destiny. But goddammit, why did he and I have to be the ones to die? We only wanted to make things right. King loved his people. I loved my family.

And I love him…There was no use trying to deny it anymore. What was the point? I would be dead in a few hours, and there was no one left to impress or fool.

Not even myself.

Taking this journey had finally allowed me to reconcile the conflicting emotions I’d lived with these last few months. Yes, it was possible to simultaneously hate and want a person. Yes, I’d felt compassion and remorse for that man’s plight and suffering, even when I feared him. Yes, my life with him felt like a sick and twisted merry-go-round of epic proportions.

Until now.

Now I knew. King wasn’t one man; he was layers. Light surrounded by a thick layer of darkness. Life encased by death. Scar tissue over a soul that was noble and good.

I felt a deep sense of relief and gratitude. I got to meet the real man. And he was beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined.

So what now?

I took a breath and swayed my arms from side to side as there wasn’t much else to do. I had no magical transportation or…

Wait. Yes, I do. I had the damned bracelet. I could go back.

But what if…what if I returned to that horror I’d left? That monster’s hands all over my body, my wrists burning as I tried to break free, the absolute nightmare of knowing I’d once again miscalculated King and his aptitude for cruelty.

You have to choose.

I still wore the bracelet on my right wrist; it might lead me home. But would I return to a scene of unspeakable violence, or find that King had changed all our fates and so return to a completely different future? And if different, would I lose those memories most precious to me? Surprisingly, those moments weren’t the big events—graduation, first kiss, or landing the dream job. They were the small breaths in between the noise: Justin crying in my arms when he was five with a split knee on the playground, the tears pouring from his little red face because he thought he’d die from the cut. It was the first moment in my life I remembered feeling that I mattered. I was this person’s big sister. I could make it all better with a simple hug and a few reassurances. I had wiped away his tears with the back of my hand and told him what he needed to hear. Within a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and Justin was swinging without a care in the world. Then he became a man, one with a heart bigger than anyone I’d ever met. I was his sister, his to protect and pick back up when she got knocked down.

Once again, though, I mattered. To him, anyway. I was the piece of the puzzle in his life that made him feel like he mattered. It was why he’d once ended up in the hospital when we were in high school. All because I’d had a bad day and decided to blow off a bunch of steam at a party. Tequila. More tequila. And…them—a bunch of f**king idiots who weren’t going to take no for an answer. Justin was there for me, and they beat him within an inch of his life.

I swore in that moment that I’d never again put the people I loved in danger, because my only worth in this world was when I did the saving. Perhaps Justin, too, felt that way. Perhaps…I really didn’t know, but maybe that was why he’d gone to such horrible lengths to free Jamie from her prison with Vaughn. In my heart, that didn’t make up for the things people say he did to me, but in some messed-up way, I could understand how his need to be the hero was his Achilles’ heel.

Because that was mine. I was the idiot who would do anything to save her baby brother. And now King. It was the only goddamned thing on this planet that I ever felt good at.

Yet, here you are…needing to be saved. Great job, Mia.

After days or hours passed, I didn’t know, I finally arrived to the point where my body burned from the chill. My legs and feet cramped, and my shoulders ached from swaying my arms. I wouldn’t last much longer.

Dagger or bracelet?

I’d rather die than get sent back and let King hurt me. It was the God’s honest truth.

I slipped the dagger free from the sheath tied to my thigh and gripped it in my hand. Could I do this, could I drive it into my chest?

I’d died once before, when King had stopped my heart, and it wasn’t like people say. The anticipation, the body’s will to fight, is far more traumatizing than the actual event. The actual dying felt like drifting off to sleep. And when the ring I’d worn—that giant solitaire diamond given to me by King—brought me back to life, it felt like waking right back up. Point was, I wasn’t afraid of dying.

This is the only sane choice, Mia. The only one. All other options left me to either drown or go back to where I came from—maybe.

I lifted the dagger, but suddenly saw an image of King, his electric blue eyes filled with disapproval and a scowl on those beautiful, strong lips. I could practically hear him yelling at me for giving up.