I smiled, advancing on him. “If you think I cannot do any worse to you, then you are also mistaken.”
But he raised his hands again, forcing me back. He drew his hands into fists, and I perceived some degree of pain surrounding me. The half-lives.
With a curl of his lip, Endrick extended his hands wide open, and in that same instant, all that I had perceived vanished, like a hundred masses of energy had at once ceased to exist.
The half-lives in this ro
om had all just been erased. They were dead, truly dead.
I felt their loss like a crushing weight on my shoulders, heavier than I ever could have imagined, but I had to keep moving. He was distracted, giving me an opportunity to push closer to him. I was within ten steps of him, Olden Blade ready in my hands, when he finally turned to me.
“You truly expect to kill me here?” he asked. “And then what?”
“Then the throne will be mine.”
“Until a new Infidante comes for you,” he said. “And the cycle continues.”
I stepped forward. “I will not be so foolish as you were, to lose this blade. I will use any magic that is mine to help Antora, not destroy it, as you have done.”
That made him laugh, an awful sound, and one I’d only heard issue from him when something terrible was about to happen. “If it is true, my dear, that you and I are the last two remaining Endreans, then I expect the kind of ruler you will become shall make me proud. You will be cruel, you will be sharp, you will control the people as I never could.”
“Never!”
“It’s inevitable now. I know what is inside you, but it’s all wrong. Corruption is heat, not cold. Fire, not ice. Yours feels like ice because you are fighting against it. Why would you do that?”
“I fight it because you embrace it,” I said.
“Oh, I do embrace it, and you will also. Once you understand what it truly is, once you feel its warmth, you will know how empty you have been until now.”
“I will never accept it.”
“You will, and it will begin here.”
I rushed forward, my blade ready, and nearly made it to him before he swept me off my feet and I landed harder on the floor than before. The wind was knocked from my lungs, and my head throbbed where it had crashed.
He laughed. “Go to your knees, girl.”
I pulled my blade beneath me but clutched at the marble floors, hoping for anything I could use to protect myself from what was coming. Yet I found nothing, no help, no comfort.
“To your knees!”
“I won’t. I’m stronger now, and I won’t.”
Endrick waved his hand, forcing consciousness back into Harlyn’s body. With a gasp of pain, she returned to her knees, one arm holding the place where I had cut her, and with tears streaming down her face.
Endrick said, “Obey me, Kestra, or you will see for yourself how much pain this girl can endure before she dies. It will be more than you think.”
There was no reason I should have cared what happened to Harlyn. She had pried Simon’s affections away from me, manipulated his illness to force me to leave the Hiplands, and only days ago shot me with a disk. If our positions were reversed, Harlyn would eagerly seize the opportunity to watch me die.
But I remembered how it had felt to hear I might be responsible for the death of Simon’s sister. I could not also be responsible for the girl he intended to marry.
Somewhere deep inside, I knew it would be wrong to let Harlyn suffer for my refusal to kneel to Endrick now. Which meant I would have to suffer instead.
Rolling to my knees, I said, “This is only between you and me, but you must know anything you do to me will fail. If you attempt to take my powers, I will simply pull them out of you.”
He shook his head. “I’m not taking anything from you, child. I’m giving.”
He came at me from behind, put a hand to the back of my neck, and sent something into me. It wasn’t pain; it was a burn that spread through my chest to my limbs, evil flooding through me.