Chapter 35 #2
Yanking her behind me, I keep hold of her hand. A knife is in my other one, but Jace has already grabbed Deirdre and slammed her against the wall. One of the lilac throwing knives is pressed to her throat, its tip biting deep. She cranes her head back. “Wait!” she cries.
“I’m so sorry,” Arienna whispers, and I don’t know if she’s talking to me or Deirdre. She’s a soft little thing, and I don’t want to have to kill someone in front of her.
But nor am I going to let a threat to her live.
“I didn’t come to that conclusion myself!” Deirdre blurts out, the only words that’ll save her life – for now.
A red line slips down her throat, but the blade stills as Jace waits for me to respond.
“Who told you?” I demand. Arienna squeezes my fingers, trying to pull me back, but I resist.
“Lower the knife and –” Deirdre cuts off as the blade cuts in.
“You have one minute.” A gracious offer.
“If you kill me, my mother will –”
“If you wish to waste that minute, then by all means continue. But there is nothing you can tell me that will spare your life. Give me a name and I’ll make it quick.”
“Richard!” Arienna tries to push forwards, but I hold her back. “He doesn’t mean that,” she says from behind me. “Just promise you won’t tell anyone Fa–”
“Stop talking,” I snap, steel in my voice. Deirdre flinches, cowering against the wall, rising up on her toes as she tries to get away. But her hands stay frozen and raised.
“Evangeline Sinclair,” she blurts. “She doesn’t know for certain, just suspects. The toothbrush is how she would have done it given you have a tester and any shampoo would’ve been too hard to quantify. She suspects it was Fabia.”
“It wasn’t Fabia,” Arienna says, and I can hear the panic in her voice.
I start to spin around, my heart racing.
“It was me!”
I press my hand to her mouth. The handle of my knife pushes against her lips.
I hate the sight of the blade so close to her face, but I hate what she said more.
If Evangeline has a scry in here, she just got the information she needed to force me to torture my queen. “Don’t say another word,” I beg her.
Her eyes widen as she nods. Kissing her on the forehead, I turn back to face Deirdre. “What exactly does Evangeline know?”
“Nothing. For certain, anyways,” she says, still up on her toes. “She wanted me to see what I could find out. But –” She swallows. “Neither of us have any plans to use this against you. We were all friends once,” she says, her words fractured with old pain.
A low tactic, trying to bring that up. “That was a long time ago,” I say, my anger for her growing.
That friendship died as soon as Aurelia did.
Deirdre had been betrothed to my sister at the time.
Yet, instead of mourning her loss, she shrugged and carried on as if nothing had happened. I will never forgive her for that.
“We just wanted to know if you’ve finally regained your humanity,” Deirdre says.
I scoff. My humanity?
“Aurelia asked us to watch out for you.” Her voice softens, smothering my lungs under a pile of unwavering truth. “Roughly a week and a half before she died… from cancer, she told us to make sure you didn’t lose yourself like Seqora had.”
Pain hits me hard. My sister worried I would follow in the footsteps of madness? After thrusting everything on me, she didn’t believe in me?
Arienna’s hand tightens on mine.
“You might not believe me, and frankly, Richard” –not ‘Your Majesty’, not what she’s been calling me these last twenty-odd years– “I don’t blame you.
I was never a woman Aurelia could be proud of, and the gods knew we had our differences, but I swear to you, I loved her once.
Not like you or Jace or Evangeline, but I loved her as much as I knew how. ”
As much as this fucked up world allows.
Jace’s wings flicker, the tension in his shoulders radiating out.
“I kept that promise – the last one I ever made. For her, Richard. You changed after she died, becoming more and more like Seqora –” She sucks in a breath as Jace presses the knife in closer.
His wings still. “He is nothing like Seqora.”
She killed thousands of Vylian children in her madness. Then tens of thousands of our own people after creating explosive bees, claiming they were ‘necessary casualties’. She would’ve set the entire forest on fire if I hadn’t killed her first.
Deirdre swallows as she looks at Jace. “To you, maybe,” she says nervously. “But to us? To everyone else? He is the heartless king without mercy. The Demon of Raza.”
Arienna tries to push past me again. “You’re wrong,” she says, and my chest tightens over her unwarranted, ignorant support. “He’s not a monster.”
Aren’t I?
My scar burning, I ask softly, “And did you come to a conclusion?”
Fear flashes across her eyes, but her voice is strong and full of conviction. “A monster is not capable of love.” She glances at my queen. “But you love her.”
Arienna gasps as she tugs on my arm, wanting me to face her. “You do?” When I don’t turn, she looks at Deirdre. “He does? How do you know? Did he say that? He hasn’t told me yet. Why haven’t you told me, my king, if you lo–”
Spinning to face her, I cup my palm back over her mouth. “This is not the time.”
“So it’s true?” she mumbles, her eyes light while I’m still reeling over the thought of my little sister having asked our friends to look after me… the man who killed her.
Does that mean I believe Deirdre’s words?
“Is it?” My queen kisses my palm, then stills, waiting for me to answer. Though ‘stills’ is a stretch. She’s positively rocking on her feet – buzzing, really.
My skin crawling, I try to force myself to give her what she needs despite Deirdre’s presence. But we were friends once. We shared hopes and dreams in a place that destroyed such foolishness. She knows that I’ve never uttered those three words, not to my ex-fiancee. Not to my sister. Not to anyone.
But my queen is looking at me with so much happiness, I want to say them to her. I’ve been wanting to say it for so damn long, but I don’t know how.
My throat tight, I nod.
Squealing, Arienna throws herself against my chest and wraps me in her arms. “I knew it! I love you too.”
“I know.”
She frowns as she looks up at me. “You’re really still not going to say it?” She glances at Deirdre before looking back at me. “Is it because she’s here?”
My lips tighten.
Her lips just as tight, Arienna turns to Jace. “Jace, get rid of –”
She looks so serious, I smile. The tension bleeding from my shoulders, I grab her chin and force her gaze back on mine. “I... I love you,” I whisper, and her massive fucking grin makes my chest hurt.
Unable to stop myself even if the gods ordered me, I kiss her deeply. Giving her a part of my soul. Letting the weight in my chest wash away with every stroke of her tongue. Every moan of her lips. Every whispered, “I love you.”
My voice tight as I lift my head, I say, “Release her, Jace.”
He tosses the knife at the table. It lands with its point in the wood, standing upright between the other knives. “Sorry about that, darling. Did I nick you too deep?”
Deirdre lifts shaky fingers to her neck. “No deeper than you’ve done during sex,” she breathes as she drops onto her heels. She stays pressed against the wall for a moment even when Jace steps back. Then regaining her composure, she looks at me. “She’s good for you. Aurelia would have loved her.”
“Deirdre,” Jace says lovingly as he moves away from her. “Speak of her again tonight and I will cut out your tongue.”
She pales further but lifts her chin as she glares at him, her usual fire back in her mix-matched eyes, one orange, one green to allow her to see into the world of Purgatory.
In a world where death is constant, where enemies and friends shift like leaves in the wind, one has to learn not to take such knives-to-the-necks personally.
So we are good now… until the next time we aren’t.
“You love my tongue,” she says, flicking it out to lick her lips.
“True,” he says as he turns back to her. “It would be very regrettable. Now let’s play a game.” His eyes run hot down her body. “I could use a good fuck.”
“So could I after all that.” She lifts a hand to her neck, then slides the blood down her throat, teasing him.
As my wife hurries over to the table of knives, Jace’s eyes shift to her. I step up behind her, a warning in my eyes. He’s too on edge for her right now, and she is way too innocent for his tastes.
With all these mentions of Aurelia, he is moments away from spiralling into a darkness that even makes me uneasy.
Meeting my gaze, Jace holds it as a pain moves behind his teal eyes. A split second later, he’s smiling at Deirdre, light and carefree, moving to pick up the six lilac blades.
My lungs easing, I head back to the bar to check on the food. With everyone now relaxed, it’s time to feed my queen. The handle green, I open the cabinet, then frown when I see nothing but a blue sheet of paper inside it.
Is this for one person? Two? Four? A hundred? I’ve told you countless times to write the fucking number.
Narrowing my eyes, I pick up the pen and scrawl:
This is not Deirdre. It’s King Morningstar.
“My king, you coming?” Arienna asks from her spot near the table. Jace stands beside her, between her and Deirdre. The necromancer’s hands are full of crisps, showing Jace she means no harm – her hands in sight and occupied with non-lethal objects.
We were friends once…
Aurelia asked us to watch out for you...
As the light turns green, I say, “Just a second.”
My apologies, Your Majesty. I Forgot that was a number in itself. I shall get right on making that well-known amount for you.
My eyes narrow further. Still buzzing with the need to kill something, I think about ending this insolent chef.
After we get our meal though.
And once Arienna is asleep.
And then after she wakes up and gets breakfast…
Four. What’s your name?
The light turns green.
Evangeline.
Of course it fucking is. After crumbling up the note and tossing it in the bin, I head over to the table. My eyes land on my wife, my smiling, happy wife who doesn’t belong in this world.
Aurelia didn’t belong here either…