Chapter 117 Taken Away
The Throne Room erupted into a cacophony of gasps and excited murmurs. The vampires leaned over the velvet railings of the gallery, their red eyes wide with a hungry, sadistic anticipation.
I stopped breathing. The air in my lungs turned to solid ice.
"An ultimatum, my little fish," the Emperor said, turning the obsidian dagger so the handle pointed toward me. "Kill the Vampire Lord. Take this blade, drive it through his heart, and break the curse forever. The rot dies with him, and your ocean is saved. Your kingdom is free."
He stepped closer, his blind eyes boring into my face.
"Or," the Emperor whispered softly, "refuse. Let him live. And I will throw you back into your gilded cage to watch him starve into a feral beast. I will let the curse consume him naturally, and you will sit there and feel it through your precious blood-bond as your kingdom turns to ash."
The choice hung in the air, a physical, crushing weight that pressed me down toward the marble.
Save Klaus, and destroy my entire world.
Save my world, and murder the man I loved with my own two hands.
I looked down at Klaus.
He was already looking up at me. The iron collar hissed against his throat, but his sapphire eyes were completely clear. There was no fear in him. There was no hesitation.
Take the blade, he told me through the tether. The sheer, devastating weight of his love poured into my mind, a flood of warmth and absolute surrender. Do it, Nerissa. I have lived three hundred years too long. Save your ocean.
No, I thought frantically, my hands shaking at my sides. I will not kill you. I will not.
You have to, he insisted, the mental voice sharp and commanding. If the rot detonates, everything you love dies. Your people. Your home. I will not let you sacrifice your world for a monster.
I stared at the obsidian handle the Emperor was holding out to me.
If I refused, Klaus would rot in the dungeon, and the ocean would still die. The Emperor had boxed me into a corner with no exits.
Unless I built one.
I needed time. I needed the Emperor to believe he had won, to drop his guard long enough for me to find a way to shatter this entire throne room. But to convince a three-hundred-year-old tyrant that I was willing to murder my Anchor, I had to be flawless. I could not hesitate. I could not show a single fraction of an inch of mercy.
And more importantly, I could not let the Emperor sense the conflict in my mind through Klaus’s reactions.
I had to trick them both.
I closed my eyes. I focused on the heavy, warm pulse of the blood-bond sitting in the center of my chest. I gathered every ounce of my willpower, every shred of the cold, dark pressure I had used to scream in the arena, and I wrapped it around the tether.
I didn't break the bond—I couldn't without severing my own life force—but I built a wall. I constructed a massive, impenetrable barrier of thick, freezing ice between my mind and his.
I felt Klaus’s sudden, sharp shock as the connection went completely dead.
The warmth vanished. The comforting pressure of his presence was instantly cut off, leaving me standing in an echoing, hollow void. The sudden emptiness was an agonizing, physical ache, like a limb being cleanly severed from my body. I choked back a sob, forcing my face to remain a mask of cold, unfeeling stone.
I opened my eyes.
I didn't reach for the dagger. Not yet. I just looked at the Emperor, meeting his blind gaze with a dead, hollow stare.
"The choice is yours, Arch-Duchess," the Emperor purred, offering the blade an inch closer. "The monster, or the sea."
I slowly turned my head, looking down at Klaus.
Without the bond connecting us, I couldn't feel his thoughts, but his face told me everything. He was staring at me, his chest heaving, his sapphire eyes wide with a sudden, dawning terror. He wasn't afraid of dying. He was afraid of the cold, dead emptiness he saw in my eyes. He thought I had actually shut him out. He thought I was truly going to butcher him.
I locked my jaw. I couldn't let my expression soften. I couldn't let a single tear fall. I had to be the ruthless Queen of the Sea the Emperor expected me to be.
I looked back at the Emperor.
I spoke the words clearly, letting them ring out across the silent, breathless Throne Room. The sound of my own voice felt like swallowing broken glass.
"I choose my Kingdom."
A collective, shuddering breath escaped the gallery. Vespera let out a sharp, delighted laugh, snapping her black lace fan shut.
The Emperor smiled, a wide, horrific stretching of grey skin over yellowed bone.
"Excellent," he whispered.
I looked down at Klaus one last time.
The man who had stood between me and a two-ton beast, the man who had let his own heart rot to keep my lungs clear, knelt on the blood-stained marble. He didn't speak. He didn't beg.
He just looked at me.
The devastating, absolute betrayal in his sapphire eyes shattered whatever was left of my soul. He believed me. I had convinced him.
And as the Emperor pressed the cold, heavy gold wire of the obsidian dagger into my trembling palm, I knew that even if we survived this night, Klaus Falkenstein might never look at me the same way again.