The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 62

Chapter 62: Sixty Two

The water is rising faster now--no, boiling upward--and every push of my body against the stone door feels like lifting a mountain. My shoulders scream, muscles splitting, blood slipping down my forearms as I strain to hold it open.

"Go!" I roar, choking on the bitter water already lapping at my throat. "Go!"

Evadne is first, crown clutched to her chest as the chamber groans around us. Soraya follows, then Fawn, and Altheira--but the water is up to my chin now, and I can’t breathe.

"Lyra--"

"Don’t look back!" I push harder. The door shudders. It’s closing. I’m closing.

Then something moves beneath the surface--a hand, skeletal and cold, wrapping around my ankle. Another. A dozen more. I know it is an illusion, the powerful wards around this place bringing horrors to life, trying to pull me under as it has been for the lot of us in the last four hours, but it doesn’t make the danger any less imminent.

I thrash, kick, scream, the water swallowing every sound. The door is slipping from my fingers.

Someone grabs my wrist--Evadne--screaming my name as the chamber collapses behind us. And in the final heartbeat, as the flood crashes through and the dead reach for me, I let go.

The tomb roars shut as we explode into the freezing night air, coughing, gasping. Alive.

We all crawl on knees and hands, shivering and wheezing, staring between each other, the crown abandoned in our center now. It is a surprise we all haven’t frozen to death, considering how long we stood in the chamber, trying to figure out how the tomb worked or how to steal it without triggering the death traps scattered all over the place.

The Draemont Queen’s crown is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Even with the cold sharp as knives in my lungs, my legs and arms quivering from holding the door for hours, the crushing ache in my skull and the sickness roiling in my stomach, I can’t tear my eyes from it.

Forged from what looks like living ice, it shimmers in the gloom with an ethereal light, every jagged edge singing of power older than empires. At its heart burns a single blood-red diamond, pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat, like a dark hymn thrumming against my skull, whispering to be worn. To be claimed. To be obeyed.

It had been a sight to see, all six of us screaming at each other, until we realized some roles had already been decided for us.

Like mine. And Evadne’s.

Why?

Because Lucien is a bastard.

The sigil of House Ironfang was carved into the doors. Somehow, he’d interfered with the Selection again. Only I could hold them open. And only Evadne could retrieve the crown, because only someone with Draemont blood could unlock the chest.

And Evadne, as Lucien’s cousin, had just enough of it in her veins.

Learning I was stuck in the background of the final conquest didn’t feel like the relief I expected. The supposed "immunity" only made me angrier. By fixing me to a single task, holding the door, I couldn’t tell if Lucien was trying to protect me... or send me a message. That he’d changed his mind. That he didn’t want me as his queen after all.

He’d chosen Evadne for the glory. Maybe he wanted her.

Or maybe he just didn’t want me here at all.

Why had I even bothered coming? He’d already written my fate with one move. And it left me wondering what’s next--the cauldron of oil? Exile? At this point, I’d take exile over being ignored, over being treated like I’m nothing.

Funny how a month ago I’d have given anything not to be seen by him.

As the chill fades and the last of the water sluices out of the cavern, spilling in silver streams over the cliff’s edge, the bells begin tolling. Once. Twice. Then again and again, a heavy iron heartbeat counting down the final hour.

One hour until midnight.

One hour until one of us is crowned.

The air shifts subtly at first, but impossible to ignore. Lilith’s green gaze sharpens to a predator’s gleam. Soraya’s hand drifts toward her weapon. Fawn’s lips are blue and trembling, her soaked body on the verge of collapse. Altheira just looks... done, her curls plastered flat against her skull, her eyes hollow.

And Evadne--other than her eyes a bloodshot red from swimming down for several minutes to get the crown of the chest, she seems just fine.

The world seems to draw in a deep breath in that moment. And then, it all goes to hell.

Lilith moves first, a blur of motion that splashes through the ankle-deep water. Her hand closes around the crown’s icy edge before Evadne even registers it, wrenching it free with a snarl. Soraya lunges next, colliding with her shoulder first, and the two go down hard, crashing against the wet stone in a mess of kicking limbs and curses.

"Mine!" Lilith hisses.

"You wish," Soraya spits, kneeing her in the ribs.

"Lilith’s got it--no, Soraya--"

"She bit her! She actually bit her!"

"Gods above, look at them--"

Run.

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