A scream rang out—shrill and pained. We all turned to the shut throne room doors. The scream came again. Nadia.

"The main rooms of the palace all have multiple entrances," Kai said. "Servant stairwells and balcony doors. Exits for the royals in case of emergencies. I don't believe the ballroom is any different."

Tavin said, "The private entrance from the second floor is already collapsed. I think this the only way in or out now. A runner just came from checking. But I've never been in the ballroom, no I really ain't got the mindset to problem solve this. We could blast through the doors?"

"And risk them shooting us or the hostages before we can even get inside," Jax said. He sighed and tilted his head, weighing the options. "It's an idea, but I feel like if the goal is to not kill Cohen and Nadia in the process of ambushing Caine, that won't work. He'll kill them. He might do it anyway, just for spite."

"He knows he's going to lose," Kai said. "And he'll hurt everyone in his path as he goes."

Another high pitched scream rang through the room, echoing through the high ceilings.

Heidi was pacing in front of the wide double doors now. She turned to me. "Tell me what to do, Monroe," she said. "Tell me what to do." She looked so young, so unsure.

But I didn't know what to tell her.

We needed another way into the ballroom.

"You said something about negotiations...?" Kai asked Tavin.

He nodded. "We've been trying. He isn't exactly interested in a trade. Like you said, he knows he's cornered. I don't have eyes on the room, so I can't give you exact numbers on how many soldiers he has holed up in there with him, but it can't be more than two dozen. Maybe not even that many. We've killed or imprisoned a lot of them. And even more than that have surrendered. We're at a disadvantage because we don't know what the room looks like."

What the ballroom looks like.

But I did.

I didn't know the room as well as Cohen might, but I'd been in there enough times that I could imagine a rough outline of the room. The other rebels around us were growing restless and I didn't want to say anything until I knew what I wanted to do—until I felt certain that it was what needed to be done.

"And what about..." Tavin was saying.

They were still discussing option, still talking as another screaming came from the ballroom. I walked a few paces away, trying to get catch my breath, trying to sort through the budding idea swirling in my mind. Those voice in me had gone silent, as if they too were waiting.

I caught sight of my reflection in a gilded mirror on an opposite wall. I looked tired, my hair dyed a few shades darker, my skin bruised and smudged with dirt and blood. There were cuts of my face. Dark circles under my eyes. I looked older. So much older than I had when I'd first walked into the palace and met the blue-eyed prince that was imprisoned on the other side of the ballroom doors.

I turned around, the shreds of my dress swirling around my legs. "Kai?"

I don't know how he heard me over the debates taking place in the antechamber, but he turned as soon as I said his name, dark brows raised in question. Something in my face must have said what I was thinking, what I'd already decided, because his face turned to granite. Full refusal.

"No." He walked to where I stood. "We'll think of something else."

"You said yourself that he knows how to play people against each other. And there is no one he likes to play with more than me."

"If you think I'm letting you walk into that room—"

"I don't need your permission. I've never needed it." My throat burned, but I knew I was right. "That's one thing we need to get straight right now, Kai. I love you. I've loved you this whole time. Even when you broke my heart, I still loved you. Even when everyone told me I shouldn't, I still loved you. And I have no reason for it. None. I should hate you. Sometimes—Sometimes I think I do hate you. I hate your choices. I hate that you didn't tell me the truth of who you really were. That you kissed me and held me and lied to me. That you allowed me to dream of a future that you knew was a lie. And you didn't ask for my permission when you did any of that. You didn't ask for my permission when you walked onto that dais and took the crown. You didn't ask for it when you let Darragh drug me and take me to Pellarmus. You didn't ask for it when you made a deal with him not to fight. Not to fight for your life. For our life together. You didn't ask for my permission when you took Kinsley into you bed. When you slept with her. When you married her. So, I don't need your permission to do anything. Not this, not anything." I was breathing heavily, my eyes shining, my hands shaking at my sides. There was a fist wrapped around my heart and it was squeezing. "I may have wanted your approval or your opinion. But I have never needed your permission. And I certainly don't need it now. You've lost the right to tell me what I can and can't do. You know that."

He was silent for a long time and I could tell he was trying to decide which part of what I'd said to address first. Finally he said, his voice quiet so only I would hear, "I never slept with Kinsley, Monroe. Not once. We never shared a bed. She slept with Larkin every night, both before our farce of a marriage and afterward. And I would never have willingly had sex with her." He swallowed and ducked his head, "You're right about most everything else. But I need you to know that you're wrong about that. I didn't do anything with Kinsley. The marriage was a document. A means of control. I don't want you to think, for even one second, that I wanted her."

The temptation to ask for a promise was strong, but I didn't. I no longer trusted that. I swallowed and said, "It's going to take time."

"I know. I'm patient."

I turned as another scream came from the ballroom. "I need to get in there, Kai."

"He'll kill you."

Another scream.

"He's killing Nadia right now." I brushed past him to where our friends stood talking. I said to them, "If Tavin's runners only checked the second floor private entrance, they wouldn't have been able to see the garden doors that run underneath the balconies."

"Gardens?" Tavin asked, "What gardens?"

"There are gardens. Small private gardens that run along the side of the ballroom." Kai came to stand next to me, his hands in his pockets, and turned to him. "At the ball, before I was sent to Pellarmus, you kissed me and I stormed away from you. I went outside. To the gardens. Darragh was there with me. Remember? The doors were glass, so they can't be barred well enough for us to be unable to get in."

"He isn't the sort to negotiate with his enemy. Not about hostages. He didn't take them with any purpose other than to slow us down. He has no intention of making a deal or releasing them. He means only to trip us. To hurt us..." Those golden eyes held mine, silently begging. "To hurt you, as a last act of rebellion. To hurt me. He knows he is losing. If you go in that room, you likely won't come out."

"Even if he doesn't give them us, he'll take longer with me. It'll stall him. Give our people time to get in position to attack him. It may also let me assess the room from the inside. I can try to get Cohen and Nadia away from the windows if that's where they're standing. He'll toy with me longer than he'll toy with them, Kai, and you know it."

He ran his hands through his hair. "You aren't a damn toy, Monroe."

"No. I'm goddess-touched and that damn ballroom isn't the scariest place I've walked into."

Kai's voice was soft as he said, "You don't want me to tell you what to do, but I'll blame myself if you die. If he violates you." He swallowed and said, "He touches you and hurts you because he knows it bothers me. He knows it hurts me. Monroe, he's a cornered animal. This isn't like before. This isn't a dining room where you're surrounded by people and he's trying to keep up a facade. Think of what he was willing to do then. If he was bold before, he will be blatant now. He'll hurt you in there."

I turned away from him and said to Jaxon. "I'm going to demand a trade. Me for Cohen and Nadia. If you can get your forces into the garden and enter into the ballroom through those glass doors, I'll do my best to distract Caine. I'll pull his attention away from the doors."

"If it gets quiet in the hall he'll know we've moved," Tavin said.

"Send one of your runners to gather forces from another part of the palace. We're scattered everywhere," Heidi said. Then to me she said, "If he hurts you, you kill him. I don't give two shits what Britta wants."

"Agreed," Tavin said.

Kai just stared at me. After a moment he said to no one in particular, "You're going to send her into a room alone with him, when you know he's actively torturing another girl?"

"Any better ideas, You Highness?" Heidi said.

He inhaled a shaky breath. He didn't have any.

I took his hand. "It's going to be fine."

"Kill him."

"Britta—"

"I don't care what she wants. As soon as you have an open shot, you burn him. If you can't kill him, you injure him badly enough that he can't hurt you. Do you understand me?"

I didn't tell him that my fire was burned out, fizzled to embers. That I'd pushed myself to near emptiness with the explosives and the lanterns. The cold from after the school wasn't there, but I knew it was coming. The heat in my veins was ebbing, not growing.

Another scream. A male voice—Cohen's—begging him to stop.

Heidi spun towards the doors. "We—We have to do something. Whatever we're doing, we're running out of time."

Tavin motioned for a rebel I didn't recognize to join them and he started to explain what I was planning. "I'm going now, if you're ready, Jax?" I said.

"It's going to take some time to get people arranged." Jax glanced to me. "I'll signal you. We're still getting people ready."

I was anxious to go before I lost my nerve. "I need to hurry, he expects me to be angry and emotional. He knows that if I knew my friends were in here suffering I wouldn't just stand here."

Kai looked ready to pick me up, sling me over his shoulder, and run me in the opposite direction. I reached out and pulled one of his hands from his pocket, threading my fingers through his. His chest expanded as he inhaled a deep, long-suffering sigh.

"How the hell are you so calm right now?" He asked.

My insides felt like they were quivering. "Do I seem calm?"

"Incredibly, yes. And I'm the opposite."

I reached out and patted his cheek. "My fussing mother hen always," I teased, hoping to soothe some of the tension between us. I pushed up onto my toes and pressed a kiss to his jaw. "Tell me I look like a picture," I said quietly.

He studied at me. "You're a damn picture all the time. A portrait. My favorite piece of art. I could fill a sketch book with just you."

My face heated. "You're so sappy. Careful, or people with think you're not a scary tyrannical king."

"I'm only sappy with with you. I don't particularly like anyone else, so it's easy to wax poetic about my favorite person. And I've had weeks to think of all the things I want tell you and didn't have time." I sighed and made to pulled my hand away but he caught my wrist, pressing my fingers to his cheek before he pressed a kiss to my palm. To my mark. "Please be careful," he breathed.

My heart ached, the weight of what I'd already decided pressing on me. There was only one way to play this game out fully. To sell it.

"I've walked into the arena," I said quietly. "And walked out again."

Long black lashed fluttered as those molten eyes darted up to me. "Is that supposed to comfort me?" he said against my skin.

My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly, fighting against the sudden pressure in my chest. "It's supposed to comfort me."

"Does it?"

"Not in the slightest." I cleared my throat and pulled my hand away. I took a deep breath. "You have a role to play too, you know. He expects me to be emotional and angry and reckless. And he expects you to try to stop me from doing this."

"Oh, my love, I will try to stop you."

Over his shoulder, Jax gave me a thumbs up. I took in a deep, steadying breath and looked to Kai, offering him a smile, savoring the last few second of this—our banter. The teasing. The smiles.

I scanned his face and said, "Really?"

"Really," he said, and I knew he meant it. "I know you don't believe me, but I would have stopped you from walking into that room on Sauenmyde if I'd had the chance to do so. I didn't...Everything had spiraled so far out of my control and now you're here and I'm supposed to just sit back and let you walk into danger a second time. And if something happens to you, if you die, it's my fault and I'm to blame. Everyone will say I'm to blame. And they will be right. And so yes, I'm going to argue. I'm going to, as you said, 'play my part.' For no other reason than that I won't be able to live with myself if I can't at least say that I tried. I care for you too damn much not to try to stop this."

I rose up on my toes, caught his face in my hands and kissed him fiercely. For a moment, he seemed surprised—caught unawares by it. Then he was kissing me back. Gently at first, his mouth warm and inviting and a piece of home I kept forgetting and remembering. His hands were a warm weight against my waist, but before they could fully settle, I ran my hands from his face down his neck, to his chest and I pushed away from him.

Then I was running. Kai cursed behind me, but I heard nothing else but the muffled shouts of surprise as I shoved past rebels and barreled through the small crowd to the door. My hand hit it hard. My fist banging into the wood over and over again as I began screaming.

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Hi, friends.

Hope you're having a good middle of the week. Felt like giving you an extra chapter today—to make up for all the uploads I've missed.

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