Chapter Nineteen #2
It’s a great question, I realize. Ronan had no trouble feeling the man in his throne room. This man was even closer to him.
What had changed?
“Probably too much going on. Too many feelings all at once,” says Quinn, but the way she says it makes me think she’s hiding something.
Zara doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “I hate to run, but I need to get back to the Guild. Sylvie, don’t forget the elixir. It’s important that you keep taking it even if you feel better. There’s a lot going on inside our bodies that we can’t see. That even the God-King himself can’t see.”
“Understood,” I reply. “And thank you, Zara.”
“Thank you, Sylvie. Without you, I fear we’d all be in a very different situation tonight.”
Quinn splashes some water in my direction after Zara has left for the changing room. “Come on, we should get back too before he thinks I’ve kidnapped you.”
The servants dress me in a loose Selaran evening gown I don’t recognize. It’s a soft linen fabric in a dark navy, and it feels wonderful on my skin.
Quinn whistles. “I can see it. I mean, I hated you, but I get it now. Sorry I was an ass. I thought you wanted to kill him.”
I’m grateful Quinn can’t feel my feelings. I did want to kill him.
Oh shit, that reminds me of Adria. “Can someone tell Adria what’s going on?
” I say to the servants. I don’t want to see her right now, not until I can figure out what I’m going to say to her, but she’s probably setting fire to the dungeons as we speak.
“Can you tell her I’m okay, that they know I saved the king, and that I’ll be back to the room soon? ”
“Yes, miss,” says a servant. She hurries off into another passage, again pressing on a specific stone.
At least I’ll have that bit of information to share with Adria when I see her. Maybe it’ll help soften the blow of saving the life of the person we’re meant to kill.
By the time we return to Ronan’s chambers, everyone but Taran has gone.
Ronan takes my hand, leading me to a different couch. It feels so good to have him touch me again. I didn’t realize how starved of it I had been these past few weeks.
“Your majesty, I’m sorry to interrupt—” says a guard as they enter.
“Godsdammit,” says Ronan. He turns to me apologetically. “Give me a moment.”
I nod. It’s fine.
He’s the king.
Ronan slips out the door, and Quinn takes his place. “I didn’t want to ask with the servants around, but you and Ronan—”
“Quinn,” warns Taran.
“What? I’m not blaming her. Look, Sylvie, we’ve all been in love with him at least once. I thought I only liked men because of him, for fuck’s sake, Sylvie. Men.”
I blush furiously. I also have to restrain myself from rolling my eyes—he told me everyone had been in love with him, and I thought he was just being arrogant, but I guess he was telling the truth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“I promise you’re with friends here. Taran, tell her.”
“Leave her alone, Quinn. She’s been through enough without you barging into her personal life.”
“Oh, get off your high horse. She’s one of the girls now. Look, Sylvie, he’s amazing. Idealistic and na?ve, sure, and way too trusting, but he’s the God-King for a reason. I don’t think there’s ever been a God-King that deserved it more than him. Which is ironic—”
“Quinn.” Taran can’t stop looking at the door. This must be something Ronan doesn’t want me to know.
“She needs to know, Taran. She’s going to be protecting him now at times when we can’t be there. You know it as well as I do. Have you ever seen him like this? Ever in your life, Taran?”
“No,” Taran admits, sending a frisson down my spine.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that he’s obsessed with you. And look, I won’t lie. I’ve been a skeptic. Openly hostile to the idea, you might even say. But after tonight, I’m onboard. Sail us the fuck away, Sylvie. Sail us into the fucking sunset. It’s about time he gets to be happy.”
Obsessed? My heart is pounding. Quinn is practically bouncing on the couch next to me; she’s so enthusiastic, and I’m feeling sick.
He’s obsessed with me. He has talked to them about me.
Fuck fuck fuck…
“There’s just one problem—godsdammit, Tare, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you think she doesn’t need to know.”
Taran is clutching his head like dealing with Quinn is physically hurting him. “I just think he’d want to tell her—”
“What are you two doing?” asks Ronan as he reenters the room.
Quinn and Taran—Ronan’s best friends—try to look innocent but fail, unsurprisingly.
“I’m trying to explain to Taran that Sylvie needs to know what happened tonight. What really happened.”
“Leave us,” he says, and Quinn and Taran exit without a word, although Taran does, at least, look apologetic.
“I hope you realize what kind of friend you’ve made there,” he says to me once we’re alone, gesturing to where Quinn went. “She’s never going to give you a day of peace.”
I don’t care about that right now. Not when I finally get to be alone with him again.
“Sylvie,” he sighs as he sits down next to me, wrapping his arms around me.
He leans back on the couch and pulls me to his chest, and I rest my head there against his heart. It’s beating fast, but it relaxes some as I stroke his arm. He strokes my back in response and idly runs his fingers through my hair.
In his arms, nothing else seems to matter. Not our plans, not the war, not what happened tonight, none of it.
It feels so amazing just being held by him.
But I’m greedy. I want more. I want him to kiss me. I want him to push me down on the couch and kiss me until the sun comes up. Until I’m begging him to show me where his bed is—
“I have to tell you something. Quinn is right; you need to know.”
He groans regretfully as he lifts me off of him and turns me to face him. When he looks at me, I can tell I wasn’t the only one thinking of needing more.
There’s a moment before he speaks where I think he might change his mind and just kiss me.
I can see it in the purse of his lips, the tension in his jaw.
He’s so lovely in the candlelight. The way it catches on the gold in his hair, the honey in his eyes.
The way it glimmers on his skin. I want to touch him so badly, and I know he wants to touch me…
But he stops himself, letting out a breath. He scowls, and shame washes over him. It hunches his shoulders.
It makes him look small.
“I couldn’t feel the assassin tonight,” he finally admits. “The man in the royal box. I didn’t sense him there.”
Is that it? “Quinn said it was because there was too much going on—”
“Quinn lied because others could hear. Only she and Taran know the truth. I’m losing my magic, Sylvie. I couldn’t feel him because I’m losing my magic. If you hadn’t acted, I would have died tonight.”
What, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the fuck.
“You’re the God-King. You’re a living god. How can you lose your magic?”
“I don’t know. But I think it has something to do with the actions I’ve been taking, the changes I’ve been making—”
“I don’t understand. Those changes are good, and light is good. ‘And she, the lady of light, gave her gift to the best among them.’”
I recite the Codex to him out of habit.
“I don’t think that’s true.” He pauses, and his eyes dart with the memory of something that haunts him. “I know it’s not true.”
More sacrilege.
“Light isn’t good. Light is power. The most ambitious, ruthless actions I’ve taken? Those are what strengthen my power. Everything I do out of compassion seems to weaken it. My father knew it. He tried to teach it to me, but I didn’t listen.”
“But your gift is empathy. You can feel what others feel. That isn’t power. It’s kindness. It’s good.”
“It can be, or it can be used to manipulate. When we met—” He looks away. He doesn’t want to say this. “When we met, I thought about using the attraction you felt at our first meeting to get you to like me.”
So he felt it then, the slip of my mind that made me think about kissing him.
And he thought about using it against me. To get close to me, like Larus suspected. Like I suspected.
“But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to trick you into liking me.
I meant what I said. I could feel who you were before I ever walked into the room.
Quinn wanted me to keep you close, to keep an eye on you because she didn’t trust you or Adria.
And I wanted to keep you close because…because I wanted to know you.
So I followed you as Soren. I thought if I could get to know you without the attraction getting in the way, that would be kinder.
Easier on us both if it turned out I was wrong about you. ”
Does admitting this now make him more trustworthy?
Or less?
Do I want to trust him because he’s being honest with me, something I haven’t been willing to do with him, or because the very manipulation he claims he hasn’t done has worked on me?
Could this be a part of the same manipulation?
He leans forward a little, and I can see he’s fighting not to touch me.
“But then you were attracted to Soren too, for fuck’s sake.
And my magic. Gods, it wanted me to deceive you.
It strengthened when I lied to you. It weakened when I told you the truth.
It’s weakening even now, but I need you to know this.
Lying isn’t a shadow-born thing. Not exclusively.
I don’t think the distance between shadow and light is as wide as we think it is. ”
Is this something he really believes, or is it just something I’ve always wanted to hear?
Did he know that? Could he feel it when we met?
“I can feel your doubt,” he says.
“How can you feel me if you’re losing your magic?”
“It’s not constant. It comes and goes, though I can’t predict when or why.
I can still feel most people most of the time, if they aren’t actively trying to hide things from me.
I felt the assassin in the throne room. And with you…
it’s different. You’re like an alarm bell ringing in my ear.
There was a point when I wondered if your presence was the reason for the change.
If your voice was drowning out the others.
As nice as it is to focus only on you, it’s dangerous.
But even when you pulled away from me, it didn’t stop wavering.
And the decline started before you ever came. ”
So he’d definitely noticed when I pulled away.
He must be feeling for my reaction, but I don’t know what to think. The way he talks about me, the way Quinn and Taran were talking. Quinn said he’s obsessed with me. She also called him na?ve and idealistic.
There’s a chance that he’s genuine. I would be a fool not to see that. There’s a chance this isn’t a game to him, and that he has meant exactly what he’s said since we met.
He turns to face me, and a feeling washes over me. It’s strange but familiar. Loneliness. A desperate need to be understood, to be accepted.
To be believed.
It’s there for a moment, and then it’s gone.
“I wish I knew what to say to let you know you can trust me. Maybe there’s nothing.
Maybe all I can do is prove it to you, over and over, as many times as it takes.
I’ll do it if you’ll let me.” He touches my cheek, just a brief brush of the fingertips, but it makes me tremble with longing.
“But I’m choosing to trust you. Not just out of gratitude for saving my life, though I don’t know how I can ever repay that.
But because I believe you can be trusted.
I’m trusting you with my deepest secret, something that can and will destroy me in the wrong hands. ”
“Those hands could be mine,” I say, but the words ring false. I look into his eyes. There are little flecks of gold there right in the center. So warm. So lovely. Could I really take the light from them?
Or would I sooner let him destroy me first?
“Yes, they could be yours,” he says, picking up my hands from my lap and studying them. He strokes a finger along my palm, and I shiver.
I can’t think straight with him touching me, and I know he can feel it. If I don’t do something to break this moment, I’m going to end up pulling him to me, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop.
“Well, then,” I say, forcing the words from my mouth before I do something else with it. “There’s really only one conclusion: you’re a moron.”
“Like I said, absolutely yes.”
Can he stop being charming for five minutes?
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he says.
“But I told you I want you at my side. And after today, it seems like I need you there. But I don’t care what my magic is trying to demand from me.
I won’t take your choice from you. I’m going to ask you to do something, and I only want you to do it if you want to. Deal?”
I nod my head slowly.
“I want you to join me in the royal box tomorrow. And for the rest of the festival as well.”
“The tournament is continuing?” I had thought they would cancel it after tonight’s events.
“That’s what all the commotion was about earlier. They wanted me to cancel it, but I refused. I made a promise to my people, and I intend to deliver on it. There will be extra security, but the show will go on.”
Adria will be happy, at least.
“Oh, gods. We have to watch Quinn fight Adria.”
He laughs. “Absolute nightmare scenario. Either Quinn wins and she’s insufferable forever—”
“And Adria burns the arena to the ground. Or Adria does—”
“And Quinn roasts her on the spit at the after party.”
I laugh with him, and I know what my answer will be.
“I’ll join you, Ronan.”
There are so many things for me to sort through after tonight, so many thoughts and feelings that I don’t know how to even name, let alone what I should decide to do about them.
But I know one thing quite clearly: I want to be at his side.
The rest I can think about later.