Fable of Happiness (Fable #2) by Pepper Winters

Therefore, I should have the same strength to free her, right? So what did that say about me that I couldn’t?

That I physically wouldn’t be able to survive if she left. Dramatic? Probably. The truth? Absolutely.

She can’t leave.

Even knowing what I did of my unraveling mind and tendencies of harming her. Her imprisonment was for life, purely because my reasoning for trapping her kept evolving: from physical needs and believing I could take from her whenever I damn well wanted to now acknowledging that I’d started to feel. Started to fall. Started to slip and slide, dive and drown each and every moment I was with her.

Rubbing my throbbing heart, I glared at the chain binding us as it glittered in the moonlight. Even if I physically could release her, I’d lost the key.

It was a poor excuse, but my damaged mind latched onto it with claws.

I couldn’t free her because I had no way of doing so. Therefore, keeping her was understandable, logical...necessary.

Accepting my sins, I ducked beside her and reached for her shoulder. My shadow fell over her. A sinister shape looming over an innocent, beautiful girl.

I shivered in fear. Fear of myself. Fear of my mind, my intentions, my past.

I hesitated, hovering my fingers over her delicate body.

I should let her rest. I should leave.

I should stay the hell away so I don’t—

“Kas?” Her eyes flew wide, locking onto my hand inches away from touching her.

I snatched it back, rocking on the balls of my feet as a crush of imbalance made me wobble.

Sitting upright, the silver blankets fell from her body, revealing she’d slept in the same shirt she’d worn all day. The same one she’d unbuttoned in the river when I’d dragged her in behind me. The same one she’d pilfered and wore so elegantly as she’d brandished a knife in my face—was it just this morning?—before dropping it by my feet in the conservatory.

My memory flickered, delivering a partial recollection.

“The moment I kiss you back, Kassen Sands, you’ll be at my mercy, not the other way around. Take me against my will, and I won’t just take your body in return. I will take your heart. I will unearth all the love that you’ve suppressed so, so deep inside you, and I will make you curse the very day you decided to trap me. Take me against my will, and I will show you what heartbreak can do to a man like you.”

I gasped, swooping to my feet with a grunt.

Fuck, was that what’d happened?

I’d taken her against her will. I’d hurt her—made her fight with fear and tears. Yet she’d somehow had the strength to touch me afterward. To forgive me. She’d ridden me as if she felt something for me. She’d let me come inside her. She’d kissed my cheek and sent lightning bolts through my blood.

That lightning had struck my heart.

It was still smoking, still charred, and entirely lost because of what she’d made me feel.

But...how true was it?

Was this her plan all along?

Was this the path she’d warned me about? That she’d not slept with me out of kindness but manipulation? That she fully intended to rip out the very same heart she’d woken up inside me and prove, once and for all, that monsters did bleed. That they could cry. That they could die from wretched heartbreak.

No.

I tripped backward.

She stood, her bare legs flashing with moonlight as she came toward me. Her hands came up as if to catch me. Her eyes glowed with the same sympathy and softness that’d completely annihilated me in the library. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to be sick.”

I shook my head, too fast, too fierce, sending plants and moonlight swirling. “I-I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine,” I growled, gagging on more than just the thought of her leaving but the thought of her still hating me. Worse than hating me—being such a mastermind and flawless actress that she could hide her true feelings and be gentle.

To give me the one thing I’d never had. The one thing I was fucking desperate for. The one thing I would happily die for.

Could she do that?

Could she be worse than all the guests combined? Could she carry off a performance of kindness and affection, coaxing me under her spell, all while driving the very same knife she’d thrown at me feet into my back?

Christ, I—

That would make her crueler than Storymaker, Levin, Willby...it would make her more diabolical than all of them put together because not one of them had been able to mask their true desires, their real natures.

But Gemma?

She could be my greatest enemy, all while she made me fall in love with her.

Ah, fuck.

She was right.

I was going to be sick.

I spun and stumbled for the wall. Slamming both hands on the glass, I sucked in a tainted breath, wincing against the pain in my broken arm. Air was tainted because she was there. Her scent. Her beauty. Her very fucking presence.

And then, her hand rubbed softly between my shoulder blades, and her voice lowered to a coo that I’d never, not once, been privileged to hear. “It’s okay. If you’re still upset about what you did...don’t. It’s in the past.” She paused before murmuring, “It’s two a.m., Kas. That was yesterday. Today is fresh. We can start anew.”

I groaned from the sheer pain of her comfort. Did she know her empathy was the worst weapon against me? Did she understand my bones crumbled to dust and my blood turned to mud and I couldn’t fucking think straight all because of her benevolence?