Page 15

M y eyes hurt with the lingering pain of having cried myself to sleep last night. I had only managed a few hours of sleep, but my mind was already busy enough that I would not be getting any more. I focused on the window. Pale blues filtered in—sunrise would break soon, and the kitchen would send food. I pushed myself to get dressed, to set down the blanket and slip into a simple gown.

It was easier to walk away from my blanket than it had been yesterday. Was it because I’d done it once already? Would leaving my room be easier today also? Speaking to others? Smiling?

After I buttoned the front of my dress, I walked around the bed and saw a sheet of folded parchment next to the door that led to the king’s room. I hadn’t left anything there. Had he slid it under the door?

I opened it and forgot all my small thoughts about clothes and blankets .

Dear Callista,

You accused me of being unkind. Of not understanding and of basing my actions in fear.

Of being a monster.

And you are right.

You once called me an honorable monster, but the things I have done are not honorable. I tried to justify my behavior, but those rationalizations were excuses for my fears.

I would like to submit myself to you for punishment. As you said once before, you were the person wronged, and so you should get to decide the justice to balance the injury I gave you.

Humbly,

Aedan

I read it three times. Was this possible? The king signing anything Humbly ? And without any titles?

But more importantly, did he mean it?

I tapped on the door.

He opened it immediately and locked eyes with me. He was fully dressed, with a coat loose over the sword and dagger belted around his fine trousers. His white shirt was mostly buttoned, but the top few seemed to have been ripped apart. The gaze that normally radiated power looked haunted and vulnerable. He braced his hands against the sides of the doorframe and breathed heavily, as if standing in my presence was some kind of strenuous workout.

I wanted to remind him of Motab’s murder, to make him feel some fraction of the pain that had pressed against my chest for days, to see if he really felt the remorse he described in his letter, to twist that remorse until he suffered …

And it would be so easy. He looked broken. I could not reconcile his drawn face, disheveled hair, and trembling posture with the fire-wielding, arrogant monster I knew him as.

I waved the letter at him. “What is this?”

He straightened and brought his anxious breathing under control. “Did you read it?”

“I did.” Blood pounded in my head, clouding my thoughts. I closed my eyes, took two breaths, and then met his gaze again. “But the words on this parchment are so outside of my experiences with you that I cannot believe you actually wrote them.”

“I wrote them,” he said softly.

My voice dropped to a whisper. “What did you write?”

He spread his hands to the door frame again and gripped it. His words came out hoarse and ragged. “I wrote that I am a monster. I should not have tricked your mother—I should have been honest and questioned what I did not know. In killing her, even unintentionally, I have wronged you in a way that I cannot correct. But I will submit to any punishment you believe is appropriate.”

My head pounded harder. He could not really mean any punishment . “What limitations? What qualifications?”

“None,” he breathed. He dragged in a long, deep breath and met my eyes. “Truly.”

The hammering in my head spread. It pounded through my blood and heated my skin. I could hardly breathe. He couldn’t really mean that… could he?

“What if,” I whispered, “I want you dead, like my mother?”

He pulled a dagger off the belt on his hip and extended the hilt toward me. “Then I would offer you my knife.”

I stretched a trembling hand out to take it. Five sparkling rubies decorated the crossguard and another capped the elaborate pommel. He stepped closer and wrapped his hand over mine, sealing it on the hilt. The heat from his skin flooded mine, and his voice dropped so low that it rumbled like the drekkan’s. “Or, knowing your aversion to violence, I would also offer to take a poison that will stop my heart, or…” His voice caught. “Or I would submit myself to any method of death you choose.”

“And then what?” I could not speak over a whisper, not with him inches away and our hands wrapped around a dagger hilt. The strength in his hands yelled at me not to trust this humility. It could not be real. “What,” I asked, “would your kingdom do without its king?”

He bowed his head. “A cursed king that has trapped his people in the capital he tried to protect?” He shook his head. “I do not know much about fae curses, but I hope that my death will open the barrier, free my people, and allow my cousin to come in and rule. But if not, I have left detailed instructions on my desk for my aunt to rule here and for the D’Aeran twins’ status to be elevated so they have enough authority to keep you safe.”

Tears pressed at the corners of my eyes, and I blinked them back furiously. He’d made arrangements for me to be safe in the event that I chose to have him killed. In this moment, he felt more real than any other time I’d seen him. Like a man, without magic, broken by choices he wished he’d made differently. His words tore into my soul as hard as any truth ever had. It did not matter what emotion I had this week—my body responded by wanting to cry. “I…”

I did not know what to say. Who offered themselves up for a death sentence? “Why would you do that? ”

His hand tightened around mine, and I squeezed the hilt in response. “Because.” His soft, tormented words came slowly. “If our positions were reversed, I would demand your punishment equal your crime. In this case, it would be death. I cannot live a double standard and consider myself just. So I made the appropriate arrangements.”

He really expected me to kill him. “But you said it was an accident? That you did not trick her with the intent to hurt her.”

“But the deceit was not an honorable action. And its consequences were devastating.”

I pressed my thumb against a gem on the hilt until the pressure hurt. The small pain triggered a cascading identification of pain: I hurt because I missed my mother. I hurt because anger was eating me, from the inside out. And now I hurt because my reality was shifting in a way I did not expect—a way that pounded in my head and shook my voice.

My reality an hour ago was overshadowed and controlled by an evil king who had murdered my mother. Now… the world slanted.

Now, the evil king was a broken man who had made horrible mistakes, and I— I —controlled his fate.

And he expected me to kill him.

But he hadn’t meant to kill my mother.

As much as I wanted to make him feel my hurt, he wasn’t entirely evil. He’d spared Alastor his justice when I’d asked. And Koan and Jolter. And maybe, if I could spare the king my anger, I could also spare myself the pain that came with it.

My own voice turned as ragged as his, but my mind cleared. I needed this as much as he did. “You did not intend for it to happen. Like I did not intend to hurt your rose and like Koan and Jolter did not intend to offend you.” I pulled the dagger closer to me. It was strong and solid and glowed with vibrant silver magic.

He let go of it, and I gripped it against my chest—one solid item to wrap my slanting world around. I felt like I’d run up a mountain all day, but the pounding in my head stopped for the first time since I’d seen his letter. My next words came out breathy but determined, as much for myself as for him. “I. Will. Not. Kill. You.”

A knot that had been caught in my chest burst open, and fresh air rushed into my lungs for the first time in days. I squeezed the dagger tighter as a weight lifted from my soul so fast it left me light-headed.

The king dropped to his knees and blew a long, slow breath out. “Thank you.” He raised his eyes to mine. “And what would you have me do?”

My heart sped up again as memories blurred my vision. This king asking for permission to carry me when he was a drekkan. This king protecting me from elves and giant crabs. This king handing me a book. This king giving up his seat in the theater. And now, this king kneeling in front of a cottage-raised half-fae who had less status in his kingdom than any other person.

He didn’t have to do any of that. His life would have been so much simpler if he had just let me die. He could have flooded my room in fire—consumed and erased the only person who knew what he’d done—but instead he knelt.

I didn’t know what to tell him. My heart warred with itself. Part of me wanted to help him, but part of my mind latched onto his words. He needed some kind of consequence for his actions thirteen years ago, right? Deciding to not ask for his just death did not mean he should escape all consequences. But shouldn’t his more recent actions weigh more in whatever scales of justice I was supposed to be considering?

“What do you think we should do?” I finally asked.

A hope lit his green eyes in a way that the anger and power he usually wore never could. “I would welcome a beating,” he said. “I would wear magic-cancelling cuffs so the pain lasted longer.”

“Why?” I blurted out. “Why are you so eager for more pain? Is there no such thing as enough for you?” I was so sick of it. The beatings and the fear he ruled with and the way he kept himself apart from everyone. It made him seem untouchable, but now I saw the truth. Underneath it all he was just another person trying to figure out this world.

He stayed on his knees, but drew back his shoulders and gripped his wrist behind his back. “I want to do better, but… I should pay for the damage I’ve already done. It is as close to justice as we can get without more death.”

“It won’t bring her back,” I whispered. “There is no payment that will fix death.”

He grimaced, and the muscles in his arm bulged. “That does not mean I should escape any consequences for it.”

A sweat broke out along his forehead, faster than I’d expect from nerves—even if they were the nerves of a king who hated himself. A light emanated from his skin, like the glow from a candle, and then he stifled a pained grunt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Something’s—”

He clenched his teeth, bowed his head, and groaned—like a drekkan.

And then I remembered. Elf by night. Drekkan by day. I whipped my head around to the window, where early sunbeams sprinkled into the room. “You’re shifting into a drekkan?”

He nodded and bent downward, as if his stomach hurt.

I didn’t know what to do to help him, but I knew he wouldn’t fit in the door between our rooms as a monster.

“Go!” I hissed, waving at the door. “You have more space in your room.”

He turned his tormented eyes to me again, and then stumbled back into his own suite.

I shoved the door closed behind him.