Chapter 18 #2
His lips compressed, and flames suddenly licked up his gray irises. That comment had struck true, and I felt a dark delight at discovering a vulnerability.
“I wasn’t there,” he gritted out. “If I had been—”
“Do you think I care?” Talking over him gave me another thrill. Drustan was used to the ballet of diplomatic words, of being the one controlling the conversation. “You weren’t there then, and you don’t get a say over what I do now, either.”
“The Accord,” he started, trying again. “It’s—”
“Still intact. If I had broken it, it would be very obvious.” I looked away, shading my eyes.
Then I recognized a tall figure making his way towards us, and a strange anticipation swooped in my belly.
“Oh, here comes Kallen,” I said casually, feeling a shiver of excitement as Drustan’s expression darkened.
“I know he remembers what happened with Markas. Do you suppose he’s going to lecture me, too?
Or do you think he’ll understand why the Blood princess needs to threaten her enemies? ”
I knew the answer.
“Princess Kenna,” Kallen said, bowing to me. He straightened, looking at Drustan. “Prince Drustan. I trust you are enjoying the afternoon?”
Drustan’s eyes still held the heat of magic. “Why are you here, Kallen?”
Kallen raised his brows, looking politely surprised. “I was invited.”
“Not at the party. Why are you interrupting a private conversation?”
Kallen stared at Drustan for a long moment before switching his attention to me. “Forgive me, Kenna. I didn’t realize you preferred privacy.”
“I don’t,” I said. “We’re allies, are we not? We shouldn’t keep secrets from one another.”
Except I was keeping secrets, and both Kallen and I knew it.
His lashes flickered, and I wondered if he was thinking about our nighttime sparring sessions, too.
It had only been a few days, but already those lessons felt essential.
Mistei didn’t seem so frightening when Kallen was teaching me how to carve my way through it.
“What an interesting policy for you to suddenly hold,” Drustan said, enunciating the syllables precisely. “Those Sun Soldiers were dead long before I was informed you were doing a late-night survey with Kallen.”
He was talking to me, but he was looking at Kallen as he said it. Kallen smirked slightly in response, and a muscle ticked in Drustan’s jaw.
My pulse thumped at the growing tension. It made me feel reckless. There was an invisible blade poised between the three of us, and I wanted to know how sharp the edge was.
Maybe I was a hypocrite, as Drustan had pointed out. I was definitely using this conversation to lash out at Drustan because I was still angry with him and grieving what we’d once had. I should be more dignified than this.
But the taste of power was in my mouth, and it was addicting.
“Drustan was lecturing me about threatening Markas,” I told Kallen. “He believes I shouldn’t do or say anything objectionable in public during the Accord.”
“Drustan has the luxury of a full house and a standing army,” Kallen replied. “He can afford to be passive with his enemies if he wishes.”
Lara was looking between the two faeries as if she were viewing a sporting match. My pulse tapped in my throat. I was feeling a more intense sort of interest than that.
“Afford to be passive?” Drustan snapped. “I’m playing politics, Kallen…but I suppose you wouldn’t understand the more subtle applications of strength. A weapon doesn’t know how to wield itself.”
Drustan was smiling again, like he could never take the mask of the charmer off for long. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? When he smiled at everything, it was impossible to tell what was real.
The anger peeking through now, though—that was real. Maybe I craved it for that exact reason.
“If Kenna wants to be a wise ruler,” Drustan continued, “she should follow my example rather than yours.”
“You should play politics on your own behalf rather than hers,” Kallen replied.
“And you should stay out of matters you don’t understand, you vile creature.”
I gasped at the animosity in Drustan’s voice. As disturbingly thrilling as I’d been finding this hostility, that had been a step too far. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
“Isn’t this what you want, Kenna?” Drustan asked, not looking at me. “You provoked this. Maybe you wanted a reminder that I’m capable of passion on your behalf.”
My cheeks grew hot, and an ugly feeling coiled in my gut. Because he wasn’t wrong, not entirely. And that was the problem with Drustan, too. He was never completely wrong.
“You should treat him with respect,” I said.
“I should treat him like what he is,” Drustan replied. “Someone who has killed and killed again, and never for the right reasons.”
“What do you know of my reasons?” Kallen asked softly.
“I know enough. And now what is he doing? Manipulating you, Kenna. Sinking his claws in and nearly getting you killed, because he can’t touch anything without destroying it.”
Kallen flinched almost imperceptibly.
I licked my suddenly dry lips. He isn’t trying to touch me , I wanted to say. Or maybe, You sank your claws into me first.
But I didn’t say anything.
The two of them stared each other down. I’d provoked this, but it was obvious the conflict between them had begun a long time ago.
The day was alive with sunshine and the buzz of insects, but the air itself was changing from the force of their anger.
Heat pressed against my skin from one side, biting cold from the other.
“How easily you condemn others for what you yourself have done, Drustan,” Kallen said. His face was still, but there was danger in every taut inch of his body.
“Be very careful how you speak to me.” Drustan’s voice was just as quiet, each word edged like a blade. “I am no puppet to dance on your strings—and no innocent to die on your sword.”
“Drustan,” I tried again. “Stop.” This no longer felt like my power to wield.
It no longer felt good. And now I was aware of the watchers again, all the faeries staring as they fanned themselves or drank wine.
Spectators to this little show I had started.
They weren’t close enough to hear the words, and Drustan was still smiling, but it had to be obvious this wasn’t a friendly encounter.
“Kallen,” I said, switching my focus to him. “You don’t have to—”
Kallen cut me off with a sharp slice of his hand. “No, Kenna. This is between the two of us.” His jaw clenched, and he stared at his own outstretched hand for a long moment.
My skin prickled. The air seemed oppressive, heavy with the potential for violence. Like the moments before a storm broke.
Then Kallen untied the knot at his belt and drew his dagger, the slide of steel ringing through the air.
My heart lurched. “Kallen,” I said, breath snatched away by a surge of fear. “You can’t—”
“Here,” Kallen said, flipping the dagger so the hilt was up. He held it out to Drustan in offer. “One of the blades that killed all those innocents. I’ve wiped it clean countless times, but perhaps some blood remains for you to comment on. Or maybe you can show me how you would wield it better.”
The contrast between the two had never seemed so stark.
Drustan gleamed in his reds and golds, long copper hair pulled back in a neat tail and arrogance dripping from his chiseled features.
Kallen was a tense shadow in comparison: his long tunic was the color of ink, stretching from his chin to his polished boots, and his hair was tousled around his jaw as if he’d spent an uneasy night.
He might rank lower than Drustan at court, but there was an edge of barely contained violence to his bearing that struck me as far deadlier.
“How many were there?” Drustan asked with a sneer, making no move to take the proffered weapon. “Hundreds? Thousands? They say you were nine years old when you first killed for Osric, and you haven’t stopped since.”
My breath caught. Nine?
“How much blood stains your hands?” Kallen shot back. “We all do what we must.”
“You betrayed members of your own house. They were executed at your bidding.”
I’d seen one of those executions, I thought sickly. At the first formal banquet I’d attended, when I’d watched prisoners be murdered in horrifying ways. One had been a faerie from Void House, ripped in two by Hector’s magic…after Kallen had reported him for treasonous speech.
“I did,” Kallen said, dipping his chin slightly. “Just as you sent Lady Edlyn to her death at the summer solstice. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made—especially when the reckless actions of a few put the entire cause at risk.”
Drustan’s laugh was wild-sounding. His cheeks were flushed, and a lick of flame danced across his teeth as he bared them at Kallen. “Do not ever compare the depth of your crimes to mine,” he said, voice guttural. “You know very well you do not always kill for a cause.”
Drustan hated Kallen, I realized with a lurch of my stomach. Not just as one rival hated another, not just as an enemy on the other side of a war. This was something deeper, something that craved blood.
Time seemed to pause as the two stared at each other with open animosity. Fire and night, light and shadow. The spark…and its potential extinguishing.
Then Kallen sheathed his dagger. His face was blank once more; he’d drawn back into himself, resuming the mantle of cold indifference. “No,” he said. “I’ve killed for reasons you can’t even imagine.”
He turned his back on Drustan and strode to a nearby table, sitting next to Una and Edric.
The abrupt de-escalation of the conflict made me nearly limp with relief.
Drustan stared at the side of Kallen’s head like he was contemplating lighting him on fire, but Kallen no longer seemed to care. The confrontation was over.
I was watching Kallen closely, though. A coil of night whispered over his exposed wrist. He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve, tugging it down until the shadow was obscured.
The Fae produced magic during moments of high emotion. Hints of smoke or shadow, the unfurling of a flower, a shimmering in the air. Kallen had shoved his feelings deep below the surface, but that didn’t mean they were quiet.
His eyes flicked to mine, and I felt the impact of that look as if he’d touched me physically. My breathing stuttered, and my heart began a faster beat. It was hard to tell from here, but I didn’t think there was any blue left in his eyes at all.
The back of my neck tingled, a race of cold-hot-cold that skittered down my arms. There were secrets in that gaze, and power, and something raw I couldn’t put words to. Hate, maybe.
Except that didn’t seem quite right. Or at least, it seemed too simple.
“I regret that you had to see that,” Drustan said.
The words broke my focus on Kallen. “What?” I asked, turning to face the Fire prince. “Why?”
Drustan was reining in his rage. His gaze was cinder-cool once more, and his smile was self-deprecating. “I can hardly advocate for good public manners if I am incapable of them myself.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
His smile was too stiff, as if it had been painted in place. “There is bad blood between Kallen and me. An old animosity. I should not have let it poison this afternoon.”
There was probably bad blood between Kallen and all of Mistei—and between Drustan and much of it, too.
There was certainly bad blood between him and Lara, not that he seemed aware of the way she was eyeing him like she was imagining how nice his spine would look outside of his body.
He had notably offered no apologies to her for the scene.
I wondered if he’d even taken her presence into account—if he calculated her into any of his equations, or if she’d ceased to matter to him the moment she’d lost her position in Earth House.
“Will you let that old animosity poison our alliance?” I asked Drustan. “If you were to gain the throne, you would still need Void’s support.”
“I can stomach a great deal when it comes to saving Mistei. Even Kallen.” He bowed his head to me. “I will endeavor not to lose my temper again. But I wonder if you understand the forces you’re playing with, Kenna.”
I didn’t, and he probably knew it.
When I didn’t reply, he nodded. “The game is intoxicating, isn’t it? But Void plays by different rules than you or I do. Use Kallen to antagonize me if you wish…but don’t imagine he will ever be a reliable ally.”
“I don’t need your lectures.”
“When you’re pretending to be friends with the King’s Vengeance, clearly you do.”
Now who was antagonizing who? “We aren’t friends,” I said, then wished I’d had a more clever retort.
But that was what Drustan did best, wasn’t it?
I wouldn’t win a battle of words. I needed to play to the strengths that set me apart in the Fae court: my unpredictability and my bluntness.
Faeries were good at spouting pretty phrases that meant everything and nothing. I was good at speaking the truth.
Something about the phrasing Drustan had used a few moments before was bothering me.
I regret that you had to see that. I thought on it, trying to place when he had said that to me before, then remembered.
It had been after the summer solstice, after I’d watched him publicly humiliate Edlyn before sending her to her death.
“You said you regret me seeing that confrontation with Kallen,” I said, lifting my chin. “Why do you regret that, rather than doing it to begin with?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, clearly pausing to formulate the right answer. He didn’t need to admit it, though. I knew why. He didn’t regret doing it—not any of it.
I curtsied. “Enjoy the rest of the party, Prince Drustan.”