Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Never kill your wife’s best friend.
Unless you can hide her body.
- King Richard
“Do you know why you’re here?” I snap as soon as I step into my rooms, irritation rolling off my skin.
The place was redecorated while we were on tour, but I wish it was the mess it was before.
There’s too much colour in here now. Too many reminders of Aurelia, whose rooms were a splash of life.
Too many of Arienna, of a future I tried to plan for, adding in colours I thought my replacement might like.
My scar burns at the sight of Evangeline; I know what I’ll have to barter for her support.
She sits on the floor, in front of a perfectly good sofa, and I sit down across from her, in front of a perfectly good chair.
She never got used to the comfort of luxury after our time at war, and I don’t want it now.
“If I accept your proposal,” she says, not surprising me in the slightest that she knows of a deal only spoken of inside a secure room.
Her ants are fucking everywhere – including in the Royal Guard.
Though in this moment, I’m happy for it.
It saves me from having to catch her up.
“I will be forced to step down from FI-9.”
“I know.” I pause for a second, Arienna’s pain slicing apart my control. She might hate me now, but eventually, that will fade. The trauma she’ll receive as queen will not.
“If you marry me,” I say, all my doubts gone, “I’ll answer any questions you have about Aurelia.”
She stills. The electricity in the air burns the hairs across my body and focuses in the scar on my hand. “I could have you executed for those secrets.”
“You could.”
“You would risk that for Arienna?”
“Yes.”
She stares at me, her eyes seeing more than Deirdre’s ever could. We nearly died in each other’s arms. We saved each other’s lives multiple times. I trusted her at my back, and she trusted me at hers, knowing I would do whatever I needed to protect her.
But when Aurelia died, everything between us changed.
When Evangeline is pissed, she’s fucking pissed. We went from lovers to enemies overnight. Everything she spat at me rang with a truth that tainted my feelings for her. A bitter feud erupted, anger and guilt flowing from both sides.
Perhaps if I actually tried to convince her that my sister had died from cancer, Evangeline would’ve accepted it, but I respected her too much for that. And if we continued on as we’d been with a secret that massive between us… we never would’ve made it anyway.
“Tory said you loved her,” my ex sneers, “but how can someone like you even know what that is?”
“Will you marry me or not?” I ask, irritated this is taking so long.
“Did you love her?”
Did? “I still do.”
She’s across the floor in an instant, her hand wrapped around my throat. Her fingers can barely hold me, but her magic hums in the air, ready to kill me whenever she wants.
“You do not kill those you love,” she sneers, making me realise she’s talking about Aurelia rather than Arienna.
I hold her gaze, unflinching. “You do if she’s a princess, and she gives you a direct order.” If she’s your sister whose alternative is to die in the fairy ring, her soul damned for all eternity.
Evangeline’s eyes widen slightly before narrowing. Her nails dig into my neck. “You’re lying.”
“You think Jace would have let me kill her otherwise?”
Her face twists in utter agony. “He could have been paid off.”
“Jace?” I scoff. “How many times have you tried to bribe him for the truth?”
“Why would she order you to kill her? Why not take her own life then? She wouldn’t have asked you… that.” She shakes her head, but her gaze holds mine.
“You know our laws about suicide.” She would have been resurrected, punished, and then forced into the fairy ring anyway.
Evangeline’s eyes narrow as she cuts off my air.
There is a moment of uncertainty in her, a madness that makes my skin crawl.
Snarling, she flings herself back and clenches her fists tight at her sides. Her chest heaving, her eyes are wet with a pain she’s carried on her own for over twenty years. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“She didn’t want you to remember her as a coward.”
She flinches, and I know I’ve struck her deeper than any knife ever has. Evangeline wasn’t quiet about her thoughts on suicide as we fought the Vylians together. She saw those who did it as selfish cowards.
Breathing out heavily, I ask, “Will you marry me or not?”
“I never would’ve thought her a coward,” she says softly, and I wonder who she’s trying to convince: me or her. “You could’ve told me.”
“You already knew.” Deep down, she must’ve. Otherwise, she would’ve killed me a long time ago.
“I loved her like a sister.”
“I know.”
Her eyes drop to the scar on my hand. After a moment, she lifts them back to me. “Did Jace know she wanted to marry him before...?”
I shake my head. It was a secret I’d deliberately kept from him until recently, knowing he wouldn’t have been able to go through with it otherwise. “He does now though.”
“And he hasn’t killed you?”
“Aurelia gave him an order not to.” I pause, looking into her eyes. “Just like she gave you one.”
Her lips tighten, and she glances away for the first time ever. “She told Deirdre and I to look after you, yes.”
“Why?”
She looks back at me with a dry expression. “Because she loved you, idiot.”
The guilt on my shoulders brush those words off. I wasn’t deserving of her love. She was my little sister, the rightful heir of Raza, and I failed her in every way.
Unable to sit still any longer, I rise to my feet. “Is that a yes then?”
“With a proposal as romantic as that, how can I not?”
“Then the wedding is in three weeks’ time.” Evangeline needs at least that long to choose her successor to FI-9. “I’ll be using a proxy.”
She snorts. “As if I would actually attend.”
“You once dreamed of having a big wedding.”
“I once dreamed of Aurelia as queen.”
“So did I.”
She glances away. Two times in one night… That has to be a record. Evangeline never flinches. She’d stare down the gods of death themselves if they ever had the courage to take her. “Why did she do it?” she asks, still looking away.
“She didn’t think she’d be a good queen.
” She didn’t want the duties that came with it, the burden.
Forced into war at thirteen, she had spent five years deciding soldiers’ fates on the front lines against the Vylians.
She had watched friends die one after the other due to orders she’d given.
She had played god for a short time, choosing who lived and died, and it had broken her.
She’d wanted to save everyone, and that had often led to brash choices that had seen even more dead.
I begged her not to kill herself, telling her we could rule together, where I made the tactical decisions in the shadows, but there was too much guilt on her shoulders. “And she knew she couldn’t kill Seqora.”
“She could’ve asked me to do it,” Evangeline says.
“I told her the same thing.”
We stare at each other, a taut silence descending. It isn’t comfortable, but it isn’t exactly uncomfortable either. It’s just there.
Suddenly breaking it, she rises. “Well.” She clears her throat. “I have shit to do, people to kill and all that.”
And I have a queen to convince to stay with me even though I’m marrying another.
But just as she heads for a window and I head for the door, I stop and turn around. “Redric is looking for you.”
She shifts to the side of the window, out of the way of any snipers while she faces me. She has probably had more assassination attempts on her than I have. “Who?”
I smirk. “That Vylian commander whose penis you kept shrinking.”
Her brows furrow as she shakes her head. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“He remembers you.”
She raises a single brow. “Are you worried about me, Dickie?”
I snort. “No, him and our peace with the Vylians. So don’t kill him when he does something stupid.”
For a split second, she looks like she did when we were friends. Light and carefree and more than a bit psychotic. A smile curling her lips, she flings herself out the window.
I stand for a moment in my empty room, looking around at the piss-poor décor. With Evangeline having accepted my marriage proposal, Arienna will have to vacate the queen’s chambers.
Not liking the thought of having that conversation with her on top of all the others, I exhale roughly. My skin crawls with a restless energy. Stepping out into the hall, I make my way to her rooms.
I nod at Jace and Marrabel as I near. Jace leans over to open the door, a bright smile on his face. Marrabel looks straight ahead, but her jaw is tight, like she’s struggling to hide a grin of her own – the same look she used to get when she did something to annoy Saragese.
My stomach dropping, I walk quickly into the bedroom, but I already know what I’m going to find there.
The bed is fucking empty.
And the bowl of eggs lay untouched.
I am going to fucking kill her.