Page 102 of The Crimson Throne
“You have to do it soon.” Moyra clutches my arm, and I want to shake her off, but I’m frozen, so deep in my own thoughts that it feels as if I’ve left my body.
Darnley’s family is involved. Gave Samson the amulet. The amulet that suppressed magic. Samson couldn’t see Kitty before; then he could. Couldn’t see magic.
“If the amulet shielded his vision from magic, maybe it also shielded magic from seeing him,” I mutter.
“What?” Moyra says. She grips my arm. “He’ll wake soon, lass. You have to act.”
I shake my head, waking up from the fog of my own thoughts. “He’s innocent.”
“He’s not innocent, child. He’s a Red Cap!” Moyra shouts at me.
“He’s…good.”
Moyra grabs my shoulders, forces me to look at her. “He’s a Red Cap.” She speaks slowly, enunciating the words. “He can’t be good.”
Was it all an act? He seemed so…sokind.Like he cared for me. I shake my head more forcibly.
It wasn’t all fake,my treacherous heart whispers.
And oh, I want to believe it. I have never once trusted my heart. I have acted with logic, not feelings, all my life.
Just as my father wanted me to.
But this? No. I cannot listen to the phantom commands of a man who won’t even acknowledge me.
“Your one job,” Moyra says, forcing me to focus on her, “is to protect Scotland from the Red Caps. Your whole life, you have done nothing but ensure the wall holds. And he is going to help tear it down!” She throws her arm out toward Samson, whose head is lolling now as he tries to wake up.
“You know what you have to do.” Moyra doesn’t sound happy about it. But her words drip with expectation.
She knows Samson must die.
She’s just waiting for me to do it.
I have heard the Red Caps rage like the berserkers of old, blacking out all knowledge of the world as they kill, kill, kill. I have alwaysthought that was what made them terrifying—the inhumanity of it, the desire for nothing but hot blood.
Isn’t that how Samson described it before? Blackout rages, waking up in the aftermath, looks of horror from all around.
I should have known then. It was never a curse, only his heritage.
It would be easier if I could be like him, if I could cut off any sense beyond murder.
I did not want to kill the man with the needle.
I do not want to kill Samson.
But—
I have to.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve grown to trust him. Like him.
To…
It doesn’t matter.
All along, he was the enemy I was born to kill.
“I was born to protect the wall,” I state flatly. “And to let no Red Cap breathe Scottish air.”
