Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
RHEA
Rhea’s eyes remain glued to the sky until the last comet fades, passing by with a final brilliant flare of light.
It was all perhaps the most beautiful sight she’s ever witnessed.
It left behind in her something akin to the warmth of a really good dream.
Of an optimistic promise. A pleasant afternoon spent underneath a gilded sun.
She feels hopeful and dreamlike. Beautiful and philosophical in the way one feels after witnessing something poetic. She feels happy. Peaceful, even.
She feels things she is not afforded to feel often.
“That was pleasant.”
Ah, there is a more familiar feeling.
Annoyance.
Rhea drags her eyes from the now dull sky and positions them pointedly on Finlay. “You know what would have made it more pleasant? You not following me around all day like a lost puppy at my heels.”
From the moment she left their group’s side, Finlay has been her shadow.
As she moved through the streets, he was there, three paces behind.
When she went to the market stalls, he was there, three paces behind.
As she tried new food and chatted with men offering to take her to the alehouses to get a drink, Finlay was there.
Though that time he did not maintain his three paces.
That time, he strode right up and stood next to her, silently folding his arms over his chest and glaring at the man with the sharpness of an Arellian blade.
Rhea thought it best to just walk away from that one. No point in causing trouble or making a scene at a festival.
She instead chose to leave the bustling, crowded streets behind. She walked away from the food, the stalls, and all the golden accessories and colorful fabrics, finding a remote hill covered in a layer of rare grass, where a large boulder sat overlooking the glittering city.
That is where she chose to watch the comets pass—upon that boulder, with the city lights and merry music nothing but a background feature.
But of course, Finlay followed, three paces behind.
“What was I supposed to do? Leave you to your own devices in a foreign city on the day of its most celebrated festival?” He snorts. “I think not.”
Finlay sits with his back against a large cypress tree, one leg stretched out in front of him as he whittles a stick with his dagger.
Without his usual stiff attire—instead clad in colorful festival wear—he carries a semblance of normalcy.
Even if he’s only swaddled himself in nice silks and still bears his signature three braids.
Somehow, when Rhea gazes at him right now, Finlay seems like just another person.
Someone removed from the stuffy Fjolla name.
Someone handsome and capable of caring about another. Someone she doesn’t have to hate.
Or maybe Rhea has simply gotten to know him better over these passing months. Has begun to understand him. Has humanized him.
It’s hard to feel like you’re enough when the only proof of love you’ve ever had is reliant on what you can or cannot give.
She turns away from him and scowls, not willing to give up her grudge. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not a child.”
Finlay’s grunted laugh is his only reply.
“I mean it,” Rhea presses, turning back to look at him over her shoulder. “I hate it when you treat me like I’m still the little girl I was when I was brought to House Dalmar.”
Finlay pauses his whittling to look up at Rhea. “How would you like me to treat you, then?”
“Treat me as an equal. As a person deserving of your respect.”
“Do you care if you have my respect? Is that something you actually want?”
Is it?
Why should she care if she has his respect? He sure as shit doesn’t have hers.
Yet the idea of him thinking poorly of her bothers Rhea more deeply than she wishes it did. She thinks poorly of him. Thinks he is a pompous asshole who cares far too much about societal hierarchies and rigid traditions. So why should it matter if he holds a similar, unimpressed opinion of her?
For reasons she refuses to consider, it does.
Rhea redirects. “Does the answer to that question even matter to you? Will it change the way you treat me?”
Finlay, having gone notably still while waiting for her answer, returns to his whittling. “No,” he says. “It probably would not.”
The answer makes Rhea angry.
She slides off the boulder, strutting straight for Finlay. “What do you mean, it probably would not?” She deepens her voice to do a spiteful mock impression of him. “Why can’t you respect me?”
Finlay glances up, his face a perfectly inscrutable mask. “I never said I didn’t.”
“Yet you refuse to say you do. Why? What is it about me that is so hard to be open and honest with?”
Finlay laughs. He laughs. “You’re joking, right?”
Rhea’s anger—though irrational as it may be—turns boiling.
“No, Finlay. I’m not joking.” She pushes her tongue into her cheek, the dam splitting open in her chest, allowing a sea of caged emotions to slip through.
“Really—what is it about me that you detest so much? That you find so deplorable, you belittle me and mock me and call me a fucking charity case to your father?”
Finlay studies her through narrowed eyes for a long, quiet moment.
Eventually, he wordlessly sets his stick and dagger on the ground and braces his weight on his legs to stand.
He takes slow, measured steps to Rhea. “Perhaps I should ask the same of you. Why do you continue to hold a grudge against me for something I did at only fourteen? I was a fucking child, Rhea—no more than a few years older than you were when they died. And yet you treat me as if I am an irredeemable monster. As if I had any real choice the day I told Tynan where to find you all.”
Anger, grief, and hatred all clamor together in Rhea’s chest. “You want redemption, Frosty? Then tell me what you’ve done to earn it.
Tell me what good you’ve brought into the world.
” A purposeful pause. “Oh, wait—you can’t.
Because you continue to be your father’s obedient lapdog, spreading his fucked up ideology about blood supremacy.
” Stricken by both her anger and grief, Rhea reaches back for the hair pin dagger wedged through her half-drawn bun.
She takes the thin blade—sharp as any sword’s edge—and presses the tip of it into her forearm. Then she drags it across her skin.
Finlay’s face twists with shock. “Rhea, what the hell are you doing?”
A crimson seam appears just below the crook of her elbow, blood already dripping down the length of her arm.
“See this blood? Do you see the color of it? It is the same as yours. It is the same as everyone in House Fjolla’s has ever fucking been and ever fucking will be.
Your blood is no different than mine. Yet you and your highborn father would see to it that people like me and the commoners and the poorfolk in the slums think it is. ”
He remains silent.
“So tell me, Finlay,” she demands while sliding her hair pin back into place with her other arm. “Why. Do. You. Hate. Me.”
“Hate you,” Finlay scoffs so low, Rhea nearly misses it.
He takes a step closer. And then another.
The space between them has diminished to nothing more than the barriers of their own walls and defenses.
“At this point, after everything that’s happened between us, can you still truly reduce all I feel to me merely hating you? ”
“Forgive me—what emotion am I missing? Disgust? Anger? Pity? Perhaps all of them?” She lifts her chin, not allowing any of the turmoil swimming in her chest to leak through the cracks threatening to break her apart.
“Please, enlighten me on the spectrum of terrible things I force you to feel when you look at me.”
He scoffs a sharp laugh, rubbing his fingers across his forehead before threading them through his hair. “You know nothing of what I feel when I look at you, Rhea. Nothing.”
“No? Then why don’t you tell me. Tell me all about how hard it is to have someone so low and common in the presence of a great Fjolla.
” Rhea knows she has officially let her anger get the best of her.
That she is being childish in provoking him.
Yet she seems unable to stop herself. To get control.
The words come out like vomit, a desperate defense to expunge some of the venom from her body.
Finlay lowers his chin to meet her eyes fully. “Do not pretend to understand me.”
“I don’t understand you. That’s my problem. I don’t understand you, your actions, or your words in the slightest.”
“No?” Finlay studies her with a sharp look in his eye.
Rhea lifts her chin even higher, nearly pressing the tips of their noses together. “No.”
She can feel the heat radiating between their skin as they hold each other’s stares. They are so close that if anyone were gazing upon them right now, they would probably think they were lovers caught in an intimate moment.
Yet they are not lovers, and there is no intimacy here. She would rather stab one of her daggers through her hand or cut another slice on her arm than be intimate with him.
But if that were entirely true, why does Rhea feel a heat simmering in her stomach as she holds Finlay’s eyes which is not attributed to anger?
Why is there a quiet fluttering in her chest as she notices with full clarity just how close their bodies are?
How Finlay’s hair looks silver beneath the moonlight.
How the shadows chisel his jaw further and expand the broadness of his already impressive frame.
Why, then, do her eyes flick down to Finlay’s lips?
Why do they remain there for two whole heartbeats?
Finlay notices the shift of her gaze, and his eyes widen before shuddering with a passing expression Rhea isn’t entirely sure what to make of.