Evander threw up his hands in exasperation. “Then why didn’t you tell us, Blaise? Why didn’t you tell me? If you suspected you’d been possessed, why not get help? Why continue to put Ellie’s life at risk?”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap,” she snapped at him. “If you’d just arrested her the night you burst into Ellie’s room to save her, then whatever happened tonight—which neither of you will tell me—wouldn’t have happened. Do you know how I felt, Evander, when I found out you had the chance to take me into custody, to discover what I was? It…it crushed me. It was like having the wind taken out of me. Because I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t bring myself to. I was just praying that you would figure it out, that you would…” Her shoulders sagged, and she slumped, running a hand through her long, limp hair. “Honestly, I’m just relieved this is over.”
I couldn’t help but think she didn’t look it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Evander whispered again, and this time, his inquiry was truly a request. One asked from one friend to another.
She didn’t look at him; she just wrapped the burlap tighter around her shoulders. “I started researching as soon as Ellie made a recovery. I’d spend the night at the library trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Finding any books I could on magic possession and shape-shifting. I even researched the Queen of Naenden, but nothing useful turned up.”
My brow furrowed at that, a memory forming in my mind. “Imogen must have been suspicious of the truth,” I whispered as the other two stared at me. I tapped my finger against the air, as if to tap out the steps of the past. “I found a pamphlet of hers. She’d written all over it, taken notes about shifters. About lychaen. She must have noticed the attack happened on the full moon, and when she found you soaked in blood, she thought you were a shifter.”
Blaise shifted uncomfortably, digging her fingers between the jagged floorboards. “It was my pamphlet you found. I broke into Madame LeFleur’s shop and grabbed it when I was searching for anything that might explain what’s happening to me. The pamphlet went missing weeks ago, and I figured it was Imogen who took it. She’s been onto me for weeks, but she’s too passive-aggressive to say anything. I guess she was waiting for sufficient proof to hand me over. But I was glad for the books she brought back, the ones she thought I wouldn’t find under her mattress. I was desperate to find a way to expel the magic from me before she came out again. I hadn’t figured out yet that she was tied to the moon. If I had, maybe….” She shook her head. “I don’t know how, but maybe it would have helped…”
Evander ran his fingers through his bronze hair and muttered, “A Human’s Guide to Reversing Fae Magic… I found it in your stack of books in the library. I thought you were researching how to undo my bargain with Ellie, but you were searching for how to reverse whatever magic has its grip on you.”
Blaise picked at a strand of her matted black hair. “I was researching both.”
“What I don’t understand is how she possessed you in the first place,” Evander said. “What were you dabbling in, Blaise?”
Blaise’s cheeks heated. With shame, perhaps?
“Blaise,” I said, my voice remarkably even for the concentration of fury that rushed through my blood at the moment. “What happened to Madame LeFleur?”
Blaise lost the color in her cheeks, and for a moment, I thought she might misplace the contents of her stomach as well. “I didn’t know she was dead. Not at first. The morning after you were attacked, I went back to her shop, but it was boarded up. I asked the baker next door—”
Evander’s head snapped up. “You brought back scones from Forcier’s that day.”
Blaise blushed, chewing her lip. “I remembered Ellie liked them.”
I worked my fingers through the pleats in my skirt, refusing to make eye contact with her.
“Anyway,” Blaise continued, clearly dejected by my lack of acknowledgment of her sorry attempt to apologize for almost murdering me, “Mister Forcier said she’d been found dead the morning after the ball.”
It was Evander’s turn for his face to pale. “Blaise?” There was a question in it, one that, even now, he wasn’t willing to ask. Moments ago, when she’d worn a different body, he’d threatened to end her for hurting me.
Would he do the same to Blaise? Would he follow through on his threat? If she’d killed Madame LeFleur, which appeared likely at the moment, would he bring her to justice as he would a stranger from the streets?
That was what she deserved, wasn’t it? For knowingly putting the lives of others in danger to hide her own terrible secret?
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to wish it upon her. Couldn’t bring myself to hope the male she’d admired her entire life would bring a fist of judgment down upon her.
I didn’t know what I wanted.
But it wasn’t that.
I wasn’t sure where that put me on the justice scale.
“I don’t remember killing her,” was all she said. She shrugged, as if in resignation. “It had to have been me, though. Or whatever’s inside me. I was the only one there that night.”
Something flickered in Evander’s sea-green eyes. A curiosity of sorts, but a dreadful one, as if his mind had gotten snagged on a question he didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know the answer to.
I asked it for him. “Why were you at Madame LeFleur’s the night of the ball, Blaise?”
Her head jerked up, like the sound of her name on my lips had been a beacon, guiding her back through the shadows to a friendship that no longer existed.
She must have seen the truth of that on my face, because the hope in the whites of her eyes wilted. “I went to her to ask for a potion.”
Evander shifted, the fabric of his coat stretching against his muscular arms, his chiseled back. “What did you need a potion for?”
She wouldn’t look at him, so instead she addressed me, as if I’d been the one to ask. “I asked her for a potion that would make me different…look different, I mean. I didn’t intend for”—she gestured at herself, at the small body cloaked in seduction and shame—“this to happen. For her to change me entirely.”
Evander took a step forward, and my heart clenched as he did. But then he was kneeling next to her, and two very opposing forces waged a battle within me.
There was the rage, the jealousy that Evander and Blaise had something so deeply rooted that he would reach out to her, forgive her for what she’d done to me.
Then there was the other force. This one meeker, hardly notable, except in the face of all that rage and jealousy and wrath, it stood firm. Small but resolved.
I think it was the part of me that would have liked to be loved like that. The part of me that watched Evander, his palm cupping the face of the little girl he’d taken in as his sister, and loved that part of him.
I loved it irrevocably, even if it ended up meaning that he’d chose her freedom over my safety in the end. I loved that he loved and did not falter.
I could hate him for it, but the love ran deeper.
Because I admired him, I realized. For all the insults I’d hurled at him, for all the facets of his character I’d attacked, I admired Prince Evander of Dwellen, and that was something remarkable indeed.
I loved him, and it was infuriating, and I hated him for it.
“Why did you think you needed to change a single thing about you, Blaise?” he asked, affection pouring from his sea-green eyes. He almost let out a frustrated laugh. Almost. “Do you not see yourself? You’re perfect the way you are.”
