Chapter Ten
But it doesn’t.
Death doesn’t come. Not for me.
I hear the terrible slicing sound of steel through guts—familiar to me now, this being the third time in three days.
At least this time I’m not the one doing the stabbing.
I peek one of my eyes open to see the man who was standing next to me topple over, the contents of his abdomen spilling onto the stone floor.
A throwing knife falls from his hand to the ground. Was he planning to kill the king too, or did my thoughts damn him?
Did I just get this man killed?
Around me, chaos erupts abruptly when his body hits the floor.
There are scattered screams and the drawing of weapons, a stampede of nobility running for the exits, the guards shouting directions that go unheeded.
Taran grabs my arm.
“Let go of me!” I yell, but his grip is tight, and he pulls me with little effort away from the carnage.
I turn to look over my shoulder for Adria and Larus, but I can’t see them over the frantic movements of the crowd.
By the time I look back around, Taran has led me into the antechamber.
Ronan is there, his back turned. He’s giving directions to the guards, who are escorting an older woman from the chamber.
“Anything?” he asks Taran.
“Just the knife on the ground. Gaius will search the body and his rooms.”
“House?”
“Corvinus,” says Cyrus. “They’ve been hit particularly hard by your changes to indenturing.”
Why did Taran bring me here? Does he suspect I had something to do with it?
Will they kill me next?
“Did you see anything?” asks Taran.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me. Ronan and Cyrus turn to hear my reply.
“No…I—I don’t know.”
“Don’t be frightened,” says Cyrus lazily, as if it bores him to have to comfort me. “You’re not in trouble. We just need to know what you saw.”
Had I seen something? I try to remember what had been happening around me.
I moved up through the crowd. I chose that spot because…
“There was a space there, next to him. I was at the back. I moved forward so I could see. And there was a space next to him like someone had been there before, but they left.”
“Go,” Ronan says to Taran.
“But sir—”
“Send in Stella. He may have an accomplice.”
Taran does as he’s asked.
Taking a deep breath, Ronan stretches and leans back against the wall, looking at me. He has the nerve to smirk.
Is this some kind of game to him? A man is dead on his order, a man that I’m genuinely hoping was planning to kill him so that I don’t have his death on my conscience, and he’s just smirking at me like he was dealt the best hand at the table, and everyone else has bet their fortune.
He’s slouching now against the wall, and I am once again one hundred percent certain he’s Soren. Either that, or the king has a secret, slum-dwelling twin.
Come to think of it, after everything I’ve heard about how royalty tends to carry on with the common folk, that’s not unlikely.
“Cyrus, you too. Go back to your quarters and check on Quinn.”
Cyrus doesn’t look like he minds being dismissed, nor does he perceive me as a threat. He leaves without so much as a glance in my direction.
Ronan turns to the guard Taran sent in. “Leave me alone with her.”
A shiver runs down my spine. What is he doing?
“But your majesty, Taran would—”
“I know what Taran would say. That’s why I sent him away.”
The guard swallows hard. She’s very young, and she clearly doesn’t know how far she should push against the king. Even when he’s doing something incredibly reckless, like asking to be left alone with someone who wants to kill him.
Maybe he wants to kill me, and he wants there to be no witnesses.
But I don’t see why that should be the case. Surely the king’s Grand Vizier and his guards would lie for him. Or they would even do the deed themselves.
“Sir, I—” the guard tries again.
“I’ll tell him I made you leave. Go.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard leaves, shooting a nervous look in my direction.
We’re alone in the room.
Ronan looks at me for a long moment. It’s unfair that he can feel what I’m feeling, and I have no idea what’s going through his mind.
He crosses the room and stands just a couple of feet in front of me, almost exactly in the same position as when we met the day before. He looks different today. Tired. There are dark circles beneath his eyes.
Almost like he was out late.
He crosses his arms. I’m just beginning to wonder if he’s doing the Larus thing and waiting for me to say something when he asks, “You know I can feel everything you’re feeling, right?”
So he did feel me in the throne room. I’m terrified about what he might do, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of sounding afraid. “I’m painfully aware of it,” I say, feigning annoyance.
Two can play at this smirking game.
He comes in closer and drops his voice low. “So then why don’t you even try to disguise your rage? I felt what he felt,” he says, gesturing angrily back to the throne room. “And I felt it from you too. Why wouldn’t you even try to hide it?”
My heart feels like it’s going to beat its way out of my chest. But at least it seems the man next to me also wanted him dead. Thank Sai for that. “If you felt the same thing from me, why am I standing here? Why am I not splattered on the floor in there?”
“Because you’re not a killer.”
I almost laugh. He doesn’t know how wrong he is. Maybe I can’t kill just anyone, that much I’ve proven over the past few days, but I could kill him. At this very moment, I could cut his neck and watch that smirk wipe off his face as the blood drained from his body.
My hand itches for my dagger.
But I still it. It’s too soon. We aren’t ready. “How would you know that?”
Ronan sighs, and I swear I see some of Soren’s exasperation in the movement.
“I’ve had this gift for more than a decade.
I haven’t been able to walk into a room and not feel every emotion that every single person has for years.
I’d like to think I know people pretty well by now.
I know people better than they know themselves.
I knew you the moment I met you. Before it, even.
I knew you before I’d even walked into the room.
“Rage at me. Tell me how much you hate me. Burn down my palace and curse my name. Gods know I deserve it. But I know—I know—you won’t kill me. I know it as well as I know how to breathe. I don’t fear you, Sylvie.”
He stops and looks me right in the eye. “Not for that reason, at least.”
I am floored.
I don’t know how long I stare at him, how long the silence hangs in the air between us, but it’s an uncomfortably long time. “Gods know I deserve it.” What did that mean?
What does he think he deserves?
What did he do?
It can’t be about what he did to us. Why would he regret that—regret killing my father, taking my home, leaving my people to starve—when it has given him everything in return?
He is the God-King. He is the living God of Selara, the ruler, the man who has all the power and all the world at his disposal.
Does he regret it? Or is there something else that he did that makes him think he deserves my hatred and rage?
And what does he think he knows about me, anyway? All he has felt from me is my anger. He has never felt my grief. He has never felt my joy.
My anger is all I have right now, but it’s not the total of who I am.
“You don’t know me,” I say to him. “You know how I feel about you, but you don’t know me at all. I am more than what I am to you.”
Aren’t I?
I expect him to say something else arrogant about how he’s the only person in this world whose opinion matters, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he smiles lightly. A smile, not a smirk.
“Maybe you’re right.”
And fuck, it disarms me. It’s just like Soren admitting he’s a moron. I doubt he even believes his own words, and he’s probably just trying to manipulate me into liking him, but it works. A little, not a lot.
It makes me ask the question that has been bothering me. I know I wouldn’t have asked him, but I think I may be able to get an honest answer out of him right now. “The man next to me. Was he truly thinking of killing you too? Or could it have been my feelings alone?”
“Oh, he was definitely trying to kill me. I’m absolutely certain of that.”
“How do you know?”
“Now, now. Let me have some secrets.” He winks at me again. “Can I escort you back to your chambers?”
“I can find my own way,” I say, although I’m not completely confident that’s true. I am pleased he asked, though. Adria’s little plan seems to be working in spite of my utter failure to act like I don’t want to kill him.
“His accomplice could still be out there,” says Ronan. There’s a slight edge to his tone, almost like genuine concern.
“And if they are, wouldn’t I be in more danger walking with the king they’re trying to kill than on my own?”
He rolls his eyes, sighing like I’m the most exasperating person he’s ever met. “I’m sending one of my guards, at least. I like the dress, by the way,” he says, looking me up and down appreciatively in a very familiar way just before he shouts, “Stella!”
Around dinner, we hear from a servant that the accomplice was found, and the threat has been neutralized.
Larus was thrilled to hear of my personal encounter with the king, though I leave out the part about him knowing of my murderous intent.
Even Adria couldn’t help but seem a little interested, although she still clearly hasn’t forgiven me for humiliating her yesterday.
I still don’t mention Soren. I decide to go and try to find him again tomorrow after signing up for the Festival of Sport events that I want to participate in, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth telling the others about.