Chapter 9
R ubbing my eyes, I tried not to fall asleep at my station. I had come home last night to Mother waiting up again. My attempt to bolt straight to my room hadn’t worked, and we had been up into the early morning hours arguing with no resolution and nothing to show for it but the red rims around my eyes.
Mellie immediately picked up on my sour mood. She gave me the look she had developed when I was about sixteen that simultaneously said, “ I’m here for you,” and “ You had better tell me what’s going on right now and don’t you dare lie to me.”
“Just Mother,” I sighed. With any luck she’d believe that’s what had me on edge last night as well.
She nodded in understanding.
“What is it this time?”
“Oh, the usual,” I said, as flippantly as I could manage. “Complaints that I’m selfishly abandoning my family and all that.”
“For working?”
I didn’t need to burden Mellie with my personal drama. Unwilling to delve into the tangled web again, I just nodded.
“Why don’t you move into the castle, Quinny?” she asked. “It’s not my place to push, but I don’t understand why you keep going back there.”
“It’s complicated, Mels.” How many times had I said that to her over the years? It was starting to sound stale, even to me.
“Complicated how?” she probed. “Talk to me about it. Are you holding on for your father?”
“Maybe partially, but I think more than that I’m hanging on to the possibility of what our family could be. I don’t know . . . the whole thing is messy.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Mellie tried. “You can’t change someone’s heart to match the version you’ve dreamt up, Dumpling.” With an affectionate squeeze of my arm, she returned to her pastries, giving me some time to think.
I was desperate for a distraction, but it seemed there would be no reprieve from my worrying; my mind took my desire to avoid ruminating on my fight with Mother as license to fill the empty space with thoughts of Evander.
I couldn’t tell if I was hoping he would call for me tonight or dreading it. Would it be better to pretend last night hadn’t happened or to discuss it and set some boundaries?
The smartest thing for him to do would be to cut me out of his life. After all, I was only a servant, and I should have no qualms about fading into the background.
Except that I did.
His missive came later than usual, just as I was about to ask Serena to deliver the tray for me.
All right, I steeled myself at the summons, I can be an adult about this.
Four flights of stairs later, a pink-faced and sheepish Evander opened the door.
“Thank you for coming.”
“Of course, your Highness.” I stepped back, putting space between us. Distance was good. If I got too close, I risked getting sucked into that gravitational pull.
“About last night,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I . . .wasn’t feeling quite myself.”
“No, I’m quite sure you were feeling the whisky,” I said, arching a brow. “So much for turning to books over drink.”
He had the good sense to look abashed for a moment and, against my better judgment, I found myself softening towards him again. He just looked so lost.
“Probably not the best way to manage your stress,” I added. I fashioned the quip into a knife meant to carve through my sentimentality and force some emotional distance, but the words didn’t have my desired effect. They came off too close to our usual banter, and a fire lit in his eyes again.
“Do you have a better idea?” He stepped closer, peering down through his lashes at me, eyes darkening in challenge. A powerful force in my gut told me to surrender, to lean into him. It would be so easy.
I imagined kissing him would be different than the few kisses I had experienced throughout my teen years in the village. They were sloppy things, born of rebellion and tasting of disobedience. None of them offered anything deeper than the momentary thrill of secrecy. But kissing Evander would be all consuming, I knew. The kind of precipice you only threw yourself off if you were at peace with the fact that you weren’t coming back. I swallowed that feeling and took a step back.
“The apology doesn’t count if you’re just going to do the same thing again, Evander.”
“Do what?” The hungry expression hadn’t left his face.
“This.” I gestured between the two of us, not daring to give voice to this dangerous game.
“What if I mean it?” he asked.
“You can’t.”
“Why?” The set of his jaw was stiff, as if bracing himself for the answer he already knew was coming.
“You know why. It will only lead to more heartbreak.” For both of us. The unspoken words hung in the air. “You can’t just do what you want to do all the time.”
The floor took an assault from his boots as he took three quick, heavy steps away, turning from me and burying his hands in his hair.
“I can’t do anything! I can’t rule because my mother won’t let me shoulder the crown alone, I can’t help her recover, and I can’t stand to be around those women. It feels like I’m awaiting a life sentence every time one of them bats their eyelashes at me and I feel nothing. I can’t do it. ”
“Evander, that’s what rulers have to do,” I said, trying to keep my tone gentle, but firm. “You may not have asked for it, but you were born into this responsibility, and there’s no use pretending you weren’t. Have you considered using that authority to actually do something instead of avoiding it?”
He turned back to me, and hurt flashed across his face as he took in my words.
“You don’t think I’m doing anything about this? Searching for these women, holding this competition even when it’s the last thing in the world I want to do? I’m doing everything I can. And it’s still not enough. I’m so sick of the performance, of showing up as the prince I’m supposed to be when all I want to do is lock myself up in here and scream. For my mother. For myself. For the little boy who never asked for this godsdamned crown or this useless power or this inane competition.”
“Some of these women are working day and night for this inane competition ,” I shot back, thinking of Colette. “The least you can do is show them some respect for that.”
“Respecting their hard work and wanting to marry one of them are two separate things,” he ground out.
“Have you told them they’re at risk of losing their magic?”
The shadow that crossed his face was enough of an answer.
“Is it ‘respect’ to keep them in the dark about what’s really going on and let them stay here, risking their magic, while you wait for the right moment to pick one of them like a bonbon off a tray?” The ugly emotions I felt in the training room came flooding back to me, and I was no longer sure whether I was angry for Colette and the other Wielders or for myself. This was unfair to all of us.
Evander took two long strides toward where I was standing and towered over me, nearly spitting his next words.
“I’m not going to apologize for caring more about my mother’s life than their powers. If that makes me selfish, so be it. They aren’t in danger of anything more than losing a few parlor tricks. Tricks, might I remind you, that will become a very real danger to them if I don’t assume the throne quickly. My mother can’t hold the wards stable forever and without the protection of the crown those girls will be hunted for what they can do.”
“So you don’t even give them the choice?” I challenged. I was picking a fight, and I knew it, but fighting was safe. We were good at fighting.
“No. I don’t.” Too close again. I backed away.
“Then you’re more of a self-important ass than I thought.” I didn’t wait to be dismissed, storming through the door and slamming it on my way out.
. . .
Almost a week passed without any word from Evander. Though I hated how we’d left things, I told myself it was good that I could focus on my job and my home life without any distractions. I had said my piece. Hopefully it would only be a matter of time until he found the other half of the “powers that sang to one another” and this whole competition would be at an end.
On the sixth day after the argument, Colette pulled me aside as I entered the ballroom..
“Prince Evander came in during breakfast,” she said, her tone hushed. “He told us that Liang and Emory’s powers are gone, and we’re in danger of losing ours too. They didn’t tell us why, but he gave us all the chance to leave. There are only nine of us left.”
So he had told them. I swallowed, trying to push down the myriad of emotions that bubbled to the surface. For all his talk about selfishness, Evander had done the right thing. Though I was unsure why, the knowledge squirmed under my skin, making me shift uncomfortably. It was far easier to write him off as a spoiled princeling who didn’t care about anybody beneath him in the aftermath of our fight. Instead, here he was taking a great personal risk to give others agency in their own safety. I told myself it had nothing to do with the argument we’d had. It was simply the right thing to do.
“Are you going?” I asked Colette, pushing thoughts of Evander out of my mind. Although I’d miss her, I would never blame her for protecting herself.
“No,” she said, the word full of conviction. “I’m scared, but I’m where I need to be.”
My stomach churned at the possibility of her winning this competition and marrying Evander. Did she already have feelings for him? Is that why she was staying? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, so I didn’t ask.
“Do you know who’s doing this?” she asked, her eyes searching mine for an answer I couldn’t give.
“No.” I told myself it wasn’t technically a lie, since it wasn’t a some one, but a some thing.
“Let me know if you learn anything ,” she said, clutching my arm.
I couldn’t get out of that one with a half-truth, so I squeezed her hand back by way of answer and tried to ignore the feeling of guilt that had settled into my stomach.