Rise of a Queen (Kingdom Duet 2)

It’s happening again. It’s coming back.

Jonathan pushes off me, sitting on the bed, groaning. That manages to finally jerk me out of my daze.

Oh my God. I did that to Jonathan. I…I sliced his throat.

“Oh my God…” I breathe out loud as I straddle his lap and wrap a quivering hand on the wound in his neck. “I’m so sorry, so s-so sorry, I…I d-didn’t mean it, I only wanted… I’m s-so sorry…”

“I’ll survive,” he says it with enough ease that it should soothe me. It doesn’t. All I can focus on is the blood seeping through my fingers, covering them. I did that. Just like Dad.

I’m just like Dad.

Oh, God.

I’m going to throw up.

“Hey…” Jonathan’s soothing voice echoes in the air. “Look at me.”

I can’t. All of my attention is on the trail of blood that is seeping through his cut and slipping between my fingers. The blood that I brought out. What was I thinking? This is Jonathan. How could I cut him?

“Aurora.” His fingers stroke through my hair, then slowly slide to my chin, lifting it and gently guiding me to stare at him.

I’m trapped in those eyes I spent weeks and months getting lost in. Eyes I was going to turn vacant just like my dad did to those women.

“It’s just a graze.”

“It’s not!” My voice shatters, tears falling down my cheeks. “I’m just like him, aren’t I?”

“No, you’re not.”

He grabs a tissue from the side table, removes my hand, and wipes his neck. “See, it looks worse than it is.”

Now that it’s not covered with blood, the cut isn’t long, but it’s there, and it’s still bleeding. The more blood comes out, the harder the tears leave my eyes.

“I’m going to fix it,” I say through sniffles. “I know how.”

I crawl to the first aid kit on the bedside table, then go back to straddling Jonathan’s lap. Although I expect him to push me away, and he has every right to, he doesn’t.

Jonathan leans on one hand as the other goes back to stroking my hair.

I retrieve the disinfectant and clean the wound with barely steady hands. I can’t stop crying, even when the blood dries. By the time I place the gauze on his skin, I’m a sobbing mess.

Jonathan pushes me back so that I’m sitting on my haunches on his thighs and changes my bandages. He glares at the cut on my palm from when I clutched the shard of glass earlier. The fact that he disapproves of how I reopened my wounds, and then made them worse, is loud and clear in his dark gaze.

“Hurt yourself again and I’m tying you the fuck up, Aurora.”

A sniffle is my answer. I couldn’t talk even if I wanted to. My attention keeps filtering back to the gauze on his neck, to the blood that’s soaking the collar of his shirt.

“How do you know how to do it?” he asks in a quiet tone.

“W-what?” I manage through tears.

“You said you know how to fix it.” He pours disinfectant on my palm, but I don’t even wince. He pays special care to wipe his blood from between my fingers and from under my nails.

That makes me cry harder, feelings of shame and regret haunting my words as I try to speak, “I w-was stabbed when I was young and I-I sutured my wound myself.”

I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Maybe, like him, I’m trying to get my mind off the present.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”