31. Chapter Thirty-One
I find Evelia on the beach wrapped in a blanket and sitting on another as she stretches her delicate legs out to dip her toes in the tide.
She has several pillows propped behind her back.
Her hair flows behind her in the light breeze that adds to the beauty of the sun lighting up her face to give her an ethereal glow.
Her eyes lift from the ocean to meet mine once I materialize in front of her. “Lazzus. It’s so beautiful here. I can’t imagine anywhere better, and I can sit out here for hours, taking it all in.”
“Evelia, I-I’ve missed you.”
She smiles, and it makes everything feel right. “I missed you too. For a very long time, I have missed you.”
“Same. Did you find the answers you needed? Do you believe me when I tell you, I didn’t kill the children?”
“Yes, to both. In my heart, I knew as soon as you spoke the words. I felt it in my heart.” She touches her chest. "But I’d believed the lie for so long I had to be sure. Sit with me."
I tuck my legs under me and sit with her, like when we were young and the world wasn’t complex. When it was only us. “Where did you go?”
“I thought to run to my father and demand answers, but it’s not something he has ever willingly given me.
After realizing you hadn’t massacred the villages, there were only two possibilities I could think of for how those children died, and one was too horrific for me to handle.
My father directed me to those villages, so if you hadn’t killed everyone as he said, he may have because he wanted me to stop running away to you. ”
“Yes, I had that thought as well.”
She scoots to my side and laces our fingers together when my arm goes around her. “It wasn’t something I wanted to imagine, so I went with the other possibility first. If neither of you had killed the children and innocent villagers, maybe no one had.”
“What do you mean?”
“The queen. She can make people see things. She can pull things from your imagination and bring them to life.”
“Like her son.”
“Not exactly, but a similar magic, I suppose. Before my father betrothed me to the western prince, he had us walk together.” She giggles when I snarl. “You’re the one I married in the end, and we've had a trillion more walks than the one I took with him. Let me finish.”
I release a rough breath. “Fine.”
“We were taking a walk, and the prince bent over and picked up a dead frog. He brought it to life and let it scurry away, but he tracked it down like a hunter and stomped on it with his shoe.”
“What was the point?”
She frowns and picks up sand to let it fall between her fingers.
“I’m not sure other than he seemed to enjoy ending life much more than bringing it back.
He told me dead things should remain dead.
I asked him why bother bringing it back then, and he said the frog had stayed dead.
He only animated it. My point is the frog was real, but the queen brings the imaginary to life, but it's always just imaginary, like the frog was always dead from before we came across it. Their power is the same, and yet very different. Both illusions of something happening that has not.”
My mind wanders to the partnership I want to spark with the prince, and it makes me believe maybe I can spark the life into what he reanimates. I return my thoughts to the beach when she rests her head on my shoulder. “Was the village massacre the queen putting on a morbid show?”
“Yes, she made my mind think the villages had been slaughtered. The first thing I did was return to the villages. Since I’d never been able to return because of the trauma, I didn’t know they were all still fine.
I asked about the massacre, and no one knew what I was talking about. I confronted the queen next.”
I pull her close to me. “That was dangerous.”
“Maybe. She’s not as bad as my father always said she was. There are things she told me...” Her voice trails off.
“What did she tell you?”
“Another time, but the important one is that you didn’t harm any of the villages. It was a favor to my father to get me to stop wanting to be with you. She helped him for personal reasons.”
I want to know more, but I refuse to push her. “You were gone a long time.”
“It took a while to travel to her kingdom and back.” She climbs onto my lap, facing me. “I missed you.”
“I missed you like a bird who can’t find the sky misses soaring in the clouds.”
She meets my lips softly, and I cup her face as she leans into my touch.
I groan as she grinds against me, and I kiss down her neck.
Her skin is so soft where I run my palm under her dress.
My nose breathes in her scent, and I need more of her.
The bond in my blood hums with the desire to fully seal it.
The thought stops me, and I remove my hand from where it had inched between her legs. “The blood bond. If we sleep together, it will fully seal, and we’ll be bonded in a way that can’t be undone.”
“We already said our vows. There’s no going back from that.”
“Yes, but what it is now is merely surface. This will make it impossible to live apart. It will be something neither of us fully understands but is described in all texts as the highest intimacy two souls can reach. I forced the initiation of this bond. For that, I am sorry. I won’t go further unless you are sure it’s what you want. ”
She returns to kissing me for several minutes.
“We have always seen each other on a level no one else can match. It’s taken me a long time to forgive you, but I’ve decided I can.
That is my choice and mine alone. I already knew that sleeping with you would mean that.
” She climbs off my lap and studies the white sand.
“There’s something you need to know before you decide if it’s what you want. ”
“It’s all I want. There’s nothing you could tell me that would change that.”
“Not even if I slept with someone after our vows?”
My body bursts into flames, and I move away from her to not burn her with the rage strong enough to evaporate the ocean in front of us. “Who?”
“No one, Lazzus, but that’s my point. There are things that would make you not want to bond with me. I haven’t been with anyone, though I’m not sure I owed you that loyalty after you forced me into this situation and used me as my father has.”
My flames grow around me for several seconds, and the sand under my feet turns to glass. “You haven’t been with anyone?”
“No, what would you have done if I had?”
“Cut open their bowels and set the wound on fire so they burn from the inside out!”
“And me? You’d be done with me.”
I step into the ocean, and it boils. “How could you think that?”
“Why wouldn’t you? You’d slaughter the other person, but not me?”
“Never would I slaughter you. Not if you slept with a thousand others. Not if you destroyed my kingdom and caused the collective to send me to emptiness and I somehow made it back to you for a brief moment. I’d spend that moment telling you I love you with a greater power than all the stars and gods combined. ”
She wipes her tears and lets out a short laugh. “For a dark monster, you have the most romantic soul. But no, I’ve been with no one else.”
“Then what do you need to tell me?”
“My father didn’t send you the invitation to my wedding. He lied when you brought it up because he didn’t want you to know who had.”
“Who sent it?”
She picks up the sand and lets it fall through her fingers three times. “I did.”
“So you could kill me.”
“That was part of it. After I thought you killed the children, I spiraled, and the only way I broke free of that spiral was to become angry. That’s when I tried to figure out what you were, so that if I ever got close to you again, I could make sure you never harmed anyone again.
It broke me, but I became obsessed with getting it over with.
I think because I couldn’t bear the thought of killing you, but it felt necessary. ”
My skin cools, and I return to the sand and bury the glass so she won’t cut her feet on it. “I always understood your need to kill me.”
“You did?”
“Yes, it was deserved after treating you like a transaction, forcing the bond, and kidnapping you. It’s why I never became angry about it because it felt deserved. It was deserved.”
“Killing you was my obsession for a long time, and I prepared for it. Only I didn’t know how I was going to get out of my father’s palace long enough to test all my theories on how to kill you.
Even when he’d bring me to dance and dangle me in your face.
He watched me too closely, and I couldn’t be seen with you.
That’s why when he wanted to marry me off, it was my chance. ”
I sit a couple of feet away from her and build a rabbit from the sand. “You set me up.”
“Yes, my father had many evil people in his kingdom. Elites who destroyed and enslaved the poor to gain greater power. They exploited the vulnerable in ways too dark to mention. The things my father allowed the flourish in his kingdom... If you can think of the worst things a person can do, times that by a thousand, and that’s what the elites did. ”
“I may not be much better than your father, as I have allowed the poor to suffer.” I snap my fingers, and the sand bunny gives a few hops before turning back into sand.
“Yes, you have, but you are not what they are. You were a villain, and when I thought you killed the children, that made you the same as all the elites I loathed. The one thing I knew about you above all others was that you loved me. It was what some would have called twisted or toxic, but you loved me in the only way you knew how.”
“Always.”
“Yes, and so I gave my father the guest list, and he thought nothing of it because it was exactly who he would invite. As I said, take the darkest thing you have ever done, Lazzus, and multiply it. That is who these people were. Then, when they all confirmed their attendance, I sent you the invitation and worded it to outrage you. I made my father’s betrayal clear to you and knew what that rage would surface. ”