Chapter 7: The Confession

It hit in eleven seconds. Not fire—cold. That was the cruelty of it. Cold going down my throat and out through my chest like water poured into a marble statue, and then my knees stopped receiving mail from my brain and the floor came up. Dario caught me before I landed. And then he went down too. That was the part nobody in that room was ready for. The King of the eastern half of the city dropped to the marble with his arms locked around me, and his lips went the same shade as mine, and...