Crown Me Yours — Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

Elara

don’t turn around immediately. I let the wind bite my cheeks and the scent of turned earth fill my nose one last time, grounding myselfI against the sudden, cloying smell of mourning flowers. When I do turn, he’s leaning against the gnarled trunk of a tree.

Not Death. Vale.

Twilight catches the sharp line of his jaw, bringing out the tense shift of muscles there. Arms crossed over a chest clad in midnight-blue velvet, he looks exactly as he did the day he stepped between the headstones of my family’s plot—arrogant, impeccably groomed, annoyingly handsome.

A devastating facade.

“Dressed up for the occasion, I see,” I say. “Doesn’t the costume feel a bit tight around the shoulders?”

Vale’s green eyes narrow slightly on the fading light tracing the horizon, then they find mine. “I prefer a form that doesn’t send mortals screaming into madness. It simplifies…conversation.”

I step away from the fresh grave, the hem of my funeral cloth dragging heavily in the stiffening grass. “Why bother? I’ve seen what’s underneath the silk.”

“I daresay you haven’t just seen it.” His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile, not quite a snarl. “You have also…felt it.”

I don’t flinch.

I refuse him that reaction.

The memory ignores my refusal. It crawls up my legs, a phantom frost settling high on my thighs where his hands had been. I remember the shock of ivory gleam, a construction of bone and decay that had thrust into me with agonizing pleasure.

I shove the thought into the dark place where I keep my screams. “One less reason to keep up the pretense, then,” I say. “What shall I call you from

now on? Lord Death? Just Death?”

“I am quite fond of Vale.”

“Obviously,” I grind out, waving a hand at his too-shiny black curls, his too-perfect face. “Why not take him off, hmm? Why not show me your true form?”

His eyes flick over me. Not the way a man takes in a woman, but the way he measures a problem. They linger a beat too long on my mouth, though—perhaps on the slight tremble there—then drop to the grave mound.

“Presume,” he finally says, “that the way you screamed, fled, cowered, and hid under a table serves as a perfectly adequate reason.”

Heat flares under my collar, hot and sharp, burning away the lingering cold. I hate that he saw me reduced to a scrambling, terrified child, hiding from the very thing I’ve spent my life burying.

“I’m sick of the fucking masks.” I take a step toward him, forcing him to look away from the dirt and back at me. “Do it. Drop the theater. If we’re going to talk, I want to talk to the thing that created the curse sitting on my head, not the pretty puppet it used to seduce me.”

“Seduce you?” He pushes off the tree, moving with that fluid, determined grace that screams predator, no matter how fine the velvet that wraps it. “If I recall correctly, Elara, then you came to me.” His voice drops,

shedding the polite veneer for something darker. “You came to my room,” he murmurs, stopping inches from where I stand rooted. “You pressed those small, gravedigging hands against my chest and practically begged to be ruined.”

My breath hitches, traitorous and loud in the quiet graveyard, but I hold my ground against every instinct screaming to run. “I came for instruction.”

“Is that what you’re telling yourself?” A smile touches his lips, slow and wicked. He reaches out, a finger tracing the line of my jaw. “Do not rewrite history because you’re frightened of the ink, little queen. I remember the way your pulse hammered against my mouth. I remember the way you unraveled.” He lowers his head, his lips hovering beside my ear, his breath a cool whisper against my skin. “I remember how you sounded when you came on my cock.”

My knees weaken. The heat of him—or the cold pretending to be heat— radiates into me. Flashbacks hit me like physical blows: the slide of silk falling away, the arch of my back, the guttural sound I made when he filled

me.

“Stop,” I whisper.

It isn’t a command. It’s a plea.

He ignores it. His thumb brushes the hollow of my throat, finding the frantic beat of my pulse. “If anything, you seduced me with your…blatant disregard.” He catches my wrist, bringing my palm up to his mouth, his lips grazing the calluses earned from the shovel this morning. “You move through the architecture of my existence with such ease. You stand in the center of my domain, amidst the worms and the decay, and you look so perfectly, terrifyingly at home.”

The tension snaps tight, gravity pulling me toward him while my body flushes with unforgivable tingles. Until my eyes drift past his shoulder. To

the mound of dirt.

Tingles turn to a death chill.

I reach up and grab his wrist with the force of a woman who hauls dead weight for a living and yank it away. “You’re mistaken.”

He blinks, the seductive haze faltering. “Am I?”

“When I came to you, I came to Vale,” I hiss. “Because I was starving for anything that wasn’t death.” I drop his hand like one drops a corpse.

“Don’t mistake my desperation for desire, you lying, scheming monster.”

The temperature plummets until frost crystals bloom on the grass beneath us with little clinks and clangs, the remaining curve of his mouth straightening into a line so thin it’s almost invisible. Something startlingly human flashes across his eyes before it’s swallowed by an abysmal anger.

“Says the biggest liar of them all.” His voice drops, losing its human cadence, vibrating against my ribs with ruthless force. “How about we drop this farce, and you simply tell me what it is that you demand.”

What I demand of him? Why would he think I have any leverage… “What?”

“Oh, please. You and Kael? Quite the performance.” A brittle scoff slips out of him, terrifyingly bemused. “Out of sheer curiosity, at what point did you two decide to collaborate against me, hmm?” The words are almost conversational. Until his hand snaps up, fisting in my hair at the scalp and yanking my head back, letting pain prickle across my scalp. “Was it when I was gone dealing with that foolish little farm girl? Was he whispering promises about your brother’s life if only you’d spread your legs like a good little whore, letting Death fuck you?”

I wince, about to deny it, but his other hand grips my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“And the curtain… Oh, the curtain!” he shouts. “That stroke of theatrical genius. Kael’s suggestion, wasn’t it?” He laughs, a sharp, humorless bark. “Come to think of it, you must have plotted it that night, after I left you shivering beneath the table. Oh, how cunning. I left as you demanded, and you…” He stops, his expression twisting, something ugly and raw breaking through the nonchalant veneer. “You ran right to him, and I was left the fool once more.”

For a heartbeat, I just stare at him while my mind scrapes itself raw against the echo of his words. “When a mortal fools Death,” his voice drifts from our past, “Death must grant a wish.”

Something lifts inside my core, the meaning of those words clicking into place with the same cold certainty as rigor sets into bones. But of course! To him, it must have looked rehearsed—Kael crowning me, shoving the knife into my hand, timing the cut while Vale was a step too late.

Given the chaos of all that transpired since the greenhouse, he’s convinced that Kael and I had plotted this all along. That we cheated him.

That I fooled Death.

Which isn’t true. Not at all. If anything, I was about as clueless as him, but I’m not so stupid as to confess that. If Death’s humiliation buys me a wish, I’ll damn well take it!

I stop fighting his grip, stop trembling. I let a cold, gravedigger calm settle over my face—the kind I use when the grieving scream at me for

things I can’t change.

“Took you long enough,” I say.

Vale freezes, releasing me. His rant dies in his throat, pupils blowing wide as he searches my face for the lie and finds only the hard surface of my resolve.

Then he scoffs, the last of twilight gleaming off his black curls. He rakes a hand through them, a gesture too mortal, gaze going to the horizon once more before he looks back at me.

“I didn’t know what to make of what I was witnessing until the very moment you opened his throat.” His jaw works, the muscles bunching tight beneath the skin. “It’s no small confession for any man to admit he’s been made a fool, yet it’s a particular humiliation for me, when the laws that bind me do not allow my foolishness to pass unpaid.” Tilting his head, he shifts nearer, his eyes narrowing on my lips for the shortest moment before they find mine. “What, Elara, is it you demand of me?”

“How can you not know what I demand?” My wish requires no thought, no consideration, that excitement expanding at my core a guiding force.

“Lift the curse. Destroy the crown and take your damn heartstring back.”

“Denied.” The word is instant.

“What?” That expansion in my chest comes to a halt, shriveling under the pressure of a forced inhale. “You just said—”

“The crown exists because of a wish—made by a king long forgotten, protected by laws mortals cannot fathom.” Vale steps into the space I’m trying to defend, his nearness a suffocating weight. “Did you really think it would be that easy? That you could simply wish away centuries of debt with a single breath?” He dips his head, his lips grazing the shell of my ear, his voice a mocking caress. “I cannot grant a wish that directly contradicts a prior binding.”

My chest tightens, the hope that had flared just seconds ago brittling into ash. I want to slap him, pound my fists against that velvet coat, but I force my arms to remain by my sides. Anger is useless if it’s blind.

Think, Elara. Think.

What do I demand?

“Interesting,” he murmurs, eyes narrowing as if he’s trying to read the thoughts inside my skull. “I expected a quick, calculated demand, oh-so perfectly arranged by the late King Kael. Or is it possible that he was so busy scheming, he forgot to tell you what ought to come next?”

My pulse throbs inside my ears, but I refuse to let it reveal my ignorance. I could ask for Daron’s health to be restored. For his lungs to clear. For the color to return to his cheeks. Just a few weeks ago, that would’ve been my wish. But that was before Mother arrived at the palace with dark purple veins, rot spreading silently beneath her skin… “Tick-tock, Elara.” Vale’s hand slides up my arm, his thumb drumming into the pulse point that betrays my growing panic. “Night is coming. Even I do not have all of eternity to wait for you to make up your mind.”

“I won’t let you rush me,” I snap, jerking my arm from his grip. “Can I…can I wish for my family’s health to be restored?”

Something loosens in his stance—a tension I hadn’t realized he was holding until it evaporated. The corner of his mouth ticks up, not in a smile, but in a look of supreme, insulting pity.

Like…like I asked the wrong question.

“You might as well ask for the health of the entire realm, and that contradicts what this fabulous crown demands in return for its existence.”

He steps closer still, until I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. “But I shall make a concession for my lover,” he purrs. “Daron, or Mother?” His eyes are alight with amusement, watching the wheels turn in my head.

“Choose, and I shall restore his or her health.” He brushes a stray hair from my forehead, his touch lingering. “But only once.”

Only once… Because rot remains and might claw its fangs into my family all over again. Daron could wake up healthy tomorrow, only to wither again by next harvest, and I would have spent my one bargaining chip on a temporary bandage for an eternal wound.

“I have other matters to attend to, you know,” he murmurs. “People are dying in droves. Watching you dawdle makes it difficult for me to tend to the souls piling up.” His thumb strokes along my lower lip, slow and intimate, but my breath doesn’t hitch until his mouth dives for it. For a sick, disorienting second, it looks like he’s going to kiss me, only to tilt at the last

moment and press his mouth to my ear with a faint chuckle. “Five…four… three…”

His stupid countdown sharpens my mind like a whetstone. He’s trying to confuse me. Rush me. Trying to get me to make a mistake.

My throat narrows.

I can’t demand the curse away. My family’s health is a fickle wish. I’m trapped in a cage of rules I didn’t write, playing a game I don’t understand.

Kael left me nothing: no instructions, no guidance.

Whatever he thought I could do to break this curse, he took it into the dark with him. What am I supposed to do? Take matters into my own hands? Wait around for a messenger who might never come?

My gaze snags on the mound of fresh, damp earth. Kael knew something. Something that could break this curse. If I had five minutes… just five minutes to wring the truth out of him… I look up, meeting Vale’s smug, expectant gaze. “Can you bring him back?”

The smirk slides off Vale’s face. He blinks, the casual, leaning posture of his body stiffening into something rigid and terrible. “Bring him back,” he repeats slowly.

“Kael,” I clarify, my voice trembling but gaining volume. “Do you have the power to resurrect him?”

He stares at the grave, and then at me. His expression twists into something concerning. Something petty.

“You want him back?” His voice drips with disdain, and beneath it, a current of searing heat. “Why would you want him breathing again?”

There’s no answering that in any truthful way without revealing that this bargain stands on a lie. “My reasons are my own. Surely sharing them isn’t a requirement for you to pay up.”

A symphony of brittle cracks echoes through the graveyard as the grass beneath us turns ghostly white. The frost doesn’t just coat the blades, it entombs them; the chill shooting up through the soles of my boots, biting through the leather with stinging numbness.

Before I can stumble back, Vale’s hands snap up to bracket my face.

The grip is ruthless, his palms pressing against my cheeks with the weight and finality of a coffin lid slamming shut, trapping me in the cold with him.

He lowers his forehead until it rests against mine, the contact burning like ice, his eyes searching mine with a terrifying, fractured intensity.

“Pathetic.” The rage in his voice cuts the air like sleet. “You stand before Death, owed a wish that could topple fate itself, and you ask for the return of him?” His eyes darken. “Was he your lover, Elara? Did you let him put his hands on you after you denied mine, hmm? Is that why you wept on his grave? Did his death break your stupid, mortal heart?” His thumbs press until flesh meets molars. “Do you love him!?” he roars, the sound vibrating through the soles of my feet. “You stand before a god, and you pine for the rotting flesh of a man?”

Fear rips through me so hard it rattles my lungs, stealing the air in a jagged pull. For a moment, I’m nothing but bone and breath trapped between his hands, my pulse hammering against his palms while confusion whirls through my skull.

The way his thumbs dig into my flesh, the wild, wounded accusation, the way his eyes blacken under the rising moonlight with sheer possessiveness—none of this is the reaction of a god fooled.

It’s the jealousy of a lover scorned.

No, impossible. He cannot love. He has no heart to give and apparently, no wish to get its string back. So, whatever this is, it’s not tenderness.

It’s arrogance. It’s ownership.

It’s possessiveness that tries to make me shrink, tries to control me. And I’ll be damned if I let myself be bullied by his stupid, wounded pride.

I lift my chin against his grip, forcing my breath back into my chest, and meet his gaze. “Can you bring him back or not?”

For one heartbeat, he just stares at me, wide-eyed, as if the strike of my question could make even a god bleed. Two seconds. Three. The pressure of his hands increases until my teeth ache. Then, as if he realizes what he’s doing—what he’s showing—his grip breaks.

His hands fall away.

The cold rushes in where his touch had been, and I draw a harsh, greedy breath that stings my throat. Vale turns from me sharply, shoulders rigid beneath velvet, as though the sight of my face is suddenly too much to bear without losing whatever thin mask of composure he has left. He rakes a hand through his curls. Smooths his cuffs. Stares past the headstones into nothing.

When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped of all emotion, a hollowed- out echo of the man who was just shouting in my face. “No.”

“No?”

He doesn’t look at me. His gaze fixes on a sliver of moonlight cutting across the frosted grass, right beside his boot. “Even if I were inclined to grant such a waste…Kael has been cold for hours. He has been dead too long.”

My heart gives a violent lurch. Too long. Not impossible. I step toward his back, unable to stop myself.

“But that means…” I trail off, my mind racing. “That means it’s possible? You can bring someone back?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even acknowledge the question. He simply turns around, his face smoothed into a strange blank mask, the rage of a moment ago buried beneath layers of ancient, impenetrable ice.

“What is your wish, Elara?” he asks, clipped and cold, as if he had not just stood here with his hands on my face and rage in his throat. “Choose it.

Now.”

The demand hangs in the air, a blade waiting to drop, but my mind is a whirl. Every wish I conjure—health, wealth, power—feels like a mistake I refuse to make.

My silence seems to unnerve him. He shifts his weight, agitated. His boots crunch on the frozen grass as he takes a step to the left, then another

to the right, pacing.

No, not pacing.

Dodging.

The clouds above are thinning, tattered rags revealing the rising, blinding face of the moon, and beams of silver light are beginning to pierce the cemetery canopy like spears.

Something shifts in my stomach. Earlier, he refused to show me his true form, and now the moonlight is slowly stripping him of that defiance. Why, I don’t know—whether shame, or pride, or something else altogether—but

it’ll buy me time.

I simply do nothing.

I stand and wait.

“I am failing to see the complexity here,” Vale snaps, the vibration of his frustration crackling in the air between us. He lifts his hand, leveling a finger at my face to punctuate the command. “Speak the words, Elara, or I will rip them from your—”

The wind kicks up, tearing the final rag of cloud from the moon’s face.

A beam of silver light hits him mid-threat. It strikes his outstretched hand,

and the illusion doesn’t just falter, it evaporates, elegantly tapered fingers

dissolving to sinew and bone.

He freezes.

Vale stares at his hand, at the skeletal claw protruding from the rich velvet of his cuff, stark and horrifying against the night.

He jerks his hand back as if burned, clutching it against his chest. “Next time, little queen.”

Vale spins on his heel, the velvet of his coat seeming to lose its solidity, melting into the surrounding darkness. Shadows curl around his boots, rising like smoke, weaving through his form until he’s nothing but a smear of ink against the night, vanishing completely and leaving me alone in the silent, freezing dark.