Chapter 30 #2
“She smiled at me. Not a polite smile for court, not a painted one. A real one.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and when he opens them again, they’re drowning.
“And she looked at me—really looked. So, I stole a rose,” he says.
“From the greenhouse. Thorns bit me, and I didn’t care.
I carried it to her room like I was bringing her a treasure, too.
” His eyes squeeze shut again, tears spilling faster now.
“And when I held it out…she sneezed. God, she sneezed so damn hard I thought she’d shake the walls down.
” A wet laugh slips through the sob and dies immediately.
“She thanked me, and she put that stupid rose in a vase in her room and just…kept sneezing.”
The pieces of the puzzle clash together in my mind, pressing into alignment. The painting. How he refused to take Ophelia’s hand at first. How could I have missed this?
“I tried to save her. I interfered. I begged. I threatened.” Kael looks back at me then, and the devastation in his gaze is so naked it feels like a wound.
“And after I watched her die, too, I erased Maeryn from my lineage and put Ophelia in the place she deserved.” Kael steps in close again, breath hot and bitter. “And I swore I would break this curse.”
Kael’s face twists, the softness of memory snapping. The tears on his lashes don’t dry; they sharpen, turning into something that looks too much like hate.
“And I was close.” He jabs a finger at my chest, hard enough that it thumps my ribs through the fabric. “Until you ruined everything!”
My chest curls in on itself. “I don’t know what I did.”
“Oh, I know.” Kael steps closer, breath sour with drink and fury, eyes bright with a manic, terrible clarity.
“From the beginning, I suspected that he sent you, albeit a bit more delicately than how he tried to shove that kitchen girl into my bed. I let him think I’m smitten with you…
and perhaps I am.” The cold tip of his nose presses against my temple, letting a shudder pebble my skin with how he’s inhaling me.
“I needed him sure that his plan was working. I needed him distracted. Because I had it laid out!” His voice fractures into a shout so violent, it makes the torches tremble.
“And then you—” He grabs my shoulders and shakes once, hard enough my teeth click. “What did he do with her?!”
My stomach drops through the floorboards. “Kael, I don’t know who you’re talking about. I don’t know what he did with—” My voice breaks on a shake of breath I can’t control. “I swear, I thought Vale was your brother. Who is he?”
“Vale? Is that what he calls himself?” His chuckle vibrates through those fingers he still clamps around my shoulders with bruising strength.
“Oh, you stupid, stupid girl.” The whites of his eyes gleam in the torchlight, red-rimmed and wild.
Then he leans in, his sharp breath scraping my skin as he whispers, “There is a place every soul goes to eventually, the low ground where gold means nothing and blood means everything. He owns that place; he rules it. And he waits for us there, in the valley of death.”
For a heartbeat, I don’t understand those words. They’re nonsense. Noise. They slide past my ears like water past stone. Until the last one lands.
Death.
The air leaves my lungs in a thin, useless pull.
My stomach turns as if the floor dropped out from under me, and for a moment, I swear I can feel the imprint of Vale’s hands all over again—warm on my waist, fingers in my hair, his mouth at my throat—only now the memory curdles, wrong in a way I can’t name.
“No.” No, that’s impossible. “You’re…you’re drunk. You’re angry, and you’re drunk, and you’re trying to scare me.”
But then why is my skin prickling everywhere? Why is cold sweat licking my spine? Why does my throat tighten until swallowing hurts? And didn’t the entry of Ophelia’s coronation mention Death? If he appeared in his divine form…doesn’t that indicate there’s another?
No. It can’t be.
“It’s not true.” My knees threaten to fold, so I brace a hand against the greenhouse frame, fingers trembling so hard they scrape glass. “He’s a man. He… he cried.”
Kael’s grip doesn’t loosen. If anything, it steadies, like he’s holding me up just to watch me break. “Did he?” he murmurs, and the softness in it is cruelty. “Or did he show you water, and you called it tears?”
My vision blurs. I blink hard, but it doesn’t clear. It only makes the torchlight smear into streaks, like blood on stone. I shake my head because that’s all I have. Denial. Stubbornness. The desperate need for this not to be true.
Because if it is…
If it is, then I didn’t just make a mistake. I didn’t just betray Kael. Didn’t just ruin whatever plan he had.
I opened my body to Death.
“He is a bastard,” Kael spits. “But not of blood. He’s a bastard because he feels no love. No guilt, no sorrow. He feels nothing at all because he…has…no…heart.” Scoffing, his fingers finally ease their grip, arms falling uselessly by his sides. “Lure him into the moonlight.”
My breath stumbles. “What?”
“Your…lover.” He smiles too wide, a grotesque stretch on a mouth that twists from amusement to rage and back again. “Let moonlight touch him and show you what he really is.”
He looks down at me. The drunkenness seems to settle over him again, a heavy blanket weighing down his limbs. He blinks, his eyes glazing over. Then he drops hard against the greenhouse frame and slides down, hair falling across his face.
“You ruined it,” he mumbles again, softer now, almost like a child repeating a grievance into a pillow as I step back.
Step back further.
Turn. Run.