Nineteen - Redric
I was going to break her. I was absolutely certain of it. By the start of next week, she would be bound to me by an oath that would require her to follow everything I said.
I thought about buying her a collar and making her crawl after me on all fours. I could sit back on the sofa and have her kneel in front of me like a little footrest. I could humiliate her over and over again, take her out to dinner and make her eat beneath the table for the rest of her miserable life.
I smirked as I settled onto the sofa across from the Dame, sprawling out, and Evangeline perched beside me.
It had been hours since I had touched her, hours she’d spent ‘being busy’, scouting the building to find any holes in its surveillance, washing her clothes and putting them in the bathroom cupboard to instantly dry, then taking them out and modifying them to fit her size. I had been impressed how much she could do with just a knife. The tunic she was wearing now had been three times too big, but she’d cut it open to wrap around herself, twisting and tucking it in the front to keep it there. One tug would have it falling away…
The Dame leaned forward, demanding my attention as she rested her elbows on her knees. An open notepad sat in her lap, a pen held in her hand.
“I’ve read both of your answers,” she said, then turned her gaze to Evangeline. “And yours is bullshit.”
I smiled smugly at my nemesis.
“I’ve seen the way you look at him,” she continued, and my smile stilled as Evangeline’s eyes flattened, a wall shuttering down.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Again. Bullshit. You claim not to have any feelings for him, Elana, and yet, you can’t keep your eyes off him. You deliberately provoke him.”
“I provoke a lot of people.”
She nodded. “Like Chris and Shaina, I give you that.”
I wasn’t surprised she had been watching over us at lunch. The amount of scry mirrors hanging in the resort was extensive. The only rooms I hadn’t seen any were in ours and this one. The rest were covered from every angle.
“But you don’t look at them like you do him. You don’t light up provoking others like you do with him. So what is it you’re afraid of, that you do not wish to even admit it to yourself?”
“Are you sure you’re a therapist?” she asked. “You’re like none I’ve met before.”
“Deflective and defensive. I’m not surprised. But yes, I am a certified therapist if you want to see my credentials, but when you work with people whose rage turns to murder very quickly, you learn to cut through the bullshit just as fast.”
“And how many of your clients have gone on to kill because of your sessions?” she asked pointedly.
The Dame didn’t lose her smile.
“Or does it not matter if they pay in advance?”
This time, it cracked.
“I accepted you two in here because I believed you when you said you wanted this to work. If that is not true, then I will have Erin return you to Dizon now. But if you wish to stay for whatever real reason you’re here” –she looked at us pointedly– “then you will not treat this like a joke. So I’ll ask you again, what are you afraid of?”
Evangeline studied her, looking like a viper eying up another snake, trying to decide if it was small enough to eat.
“I do not need to know all your secrets,” the Dame said as she put her pen to paper. “I do not need to know why a Vylian is here or why a prized fighter in the pits has decided to visit the same week as the owner of said pits is here. Such reasons do not bother me.
“You’re paying clients, and while you’re here, you’re under my protection.” She paused, holding Evangeline’s gaze. “As are the others.”
She tapped her pen on her notebook. “The only thing I ask of my clients is that there is complete honesty in this room. So I will ask you one last time. What is it you’re afraid of?”
Relaxing back, Evangeline spread her legs out and put her hands behind her head. She shrugged. “I barely know him. He came over here to seek me out for retribution against something I did as a child. He won me. He owns me. What can I possibly love about that?”
The Dame looked at me, and I shifted, not having ever thought of Evangeline as a child. But there had been no lie in her words. I had been nearly twice her age, and the first thing I’d done was try to kill her. I had bragged about it to my comrades the night before. How easy it would be for me to add her wand to my pile of all the witches I’d killed before her.
I had dreamed of being a hero, slaying the monstrous witch.
And all she’d been was a child.
Younger than Ziny.
Younger than Dee...
I shifted again, towards my end of the sofa, away from her, needing the space between us as the truth of my sins finally slapped me in the face.
She’d just been a kid.
A deranged, psychopathic kid of utter feralness, but a kid all the same.
“Do you see yourself ever being able to forgive her?” the Dame asked.
I opened my mouth to say no, an instinctive response, but the word stayed stuck when Evangeline glanced at me. There was a vulnerability in her eyes, most likely a ploy to win this damn game of therapy, but it was enough to make me hesitate.
She’d been a kid. Forced onto the frontlines by parents who didn’t want her before she’d even hit puberty.
Forced to watch nearly everyone she knew die day after day.
She’d been close to Princess Aurelia. Really close. And she’d lost her too.
I thought back to how she’d acted around King Richard and Jace – two friends she had once taken on the world with.
She’d been awkward and stiff. And I realised now that she’d run for the sake of running rather than a need to get back here in time for our meeting this morning.
She wasn’t the heartless monster I’d thought her to be. Monsters didn’t run. Whatever had happened between the three of them cut deep.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly, my eyes on Evangeline.
Her eyes widened ever so subtly, and she stared at me with a mirroring shock.
I had dedicated half my life to killing her.
And here I was contemplating maybe one day, one day in the far, far, very distant future, maybe, potentially, as a miracle...forgiving her for all the pain.
It was a small chance, but that miniscule weed of doubt was enough to make me uncomfortable.
I had been so self-righteous in my anger. I had carried it for decades.
But I had also originally come to Raza to forgive her so I could finally move on, so that our kingdoms could see peace – something neither of us had seen for thousands of years.
Raza still fought on its other borders, but Vylians, my people, had a real chance of healing from the chasms of war. I was a wariq, the highest rank of noble, and I owed it to them to put their futures above my own selfish greed. If King Morningstar found out a Vylian noble had killed the head of FI-9, we would go back to war.
“Maybe,” I said softly, still staring at her.
She blinked. Then looked away. Glancing back, she said two words I didn’t know how to take.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. Then shrugged. A small laugh escaped her, but it didn’t sound cruel. Didn’t sound like she was taking back her apology. It sounded like she too didn’t know what to do with it.
“But don’t let that change anything,” she said, her eyes shining. “You’ll make it weird.”
“My entire visit here has been weird,” I muttered.
She laughed, a genuine sound of enjoyment, and for the second unwanted time, I thought she was beautiful.
I shook my head. This isn’t even her real face.
“So tell me some things that you don’t like about him,” the Dame said as she started writing in her notebook.
“That I don’t like about him?” Evangeline asked. “Isn’t that counterproductive?”
“Not if he learns and fixes them.”
Evangeline shrugged. “Nothing really.”
“Not a thing?” I asked, twisting to face her.
Another shrug. “Honestly, no. If I hated everyone who hated me, it’d be a miserable existence. And besides, I can understand why you do. If our roles were reversed, I’d have killed you a long time ago.” She snickered.
“So tell me what you like about him then,” the Dame said, scrawling things down as I struggled to come to terms with just how little I’d been pissing Evangeline off. That was fucking insulting.
“His drive and dedication to me,” she said, nodding.
My eyes narrowed. Although I’d learned necromancy for her. I hadn’t learned it for her. For fuck’s sake.
“He isn’t afraid to play pranks on me.”
Emptying her bag hadn’t been a prank. For fuck’s sake!
“I like that he isn’t afraid I’ll kill him. Not many people are that brave…”
As she went and on about how all the things I had done to punish her had, in fact, been making her happy, I sat filled with the urge to just throw my hands in the air. Why the fuck was I still trying?
I should just leave and go home.
Clearly seeing my souring temper, the Dame asked, “How does hearing all this make you feel, Redric?”
“I want to kill her.”
Evangeline laughed.
And dammit. She still looked fucking beautiful.