“If I didn’t care,” he says, “I wouldn’t have wasted my energy. Believe it or not, it takes more effort to sever someone’s head from their body than it does to walk on by.”
I grit my teeth. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not joking. Do you think I enjoyed that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Did you, or did you not, once possess a magic that got high off the pain of others?”
Farin is so quiet, I can hardly tell that he’s breathing. “That man didn’t feel a thing. Didn’t even see it coming. I don’t know what more you would have had me do for him.”
I shake my head, placing my palm over my mouth, as if the man already has a stench that’s following me around.
Hero or villain?
Now that the man is dead, I think I know.
“You didn’t do it for him,” I say. “You did it for me, and I’d rather you not.”
He must think the disgust in my voice is directed at him, because he drops the bloodied dagger in the sand and walks on ahead.
He doesn’t stop to ask why I’d rather he not care about me.
Doesn’t stop to ask why I’m so distraught that we just killed my last chance of getting off this island.
My last chance, other than killing Farin himself.
Sand coats the spaces between my fingers as I retrieve the abandoned dagger from the sand.
CHAPTER 87
ELLIE
Cecilia wriggles in my arms as I stand on the castle portico overlooking Othian.
A mixture of feelings twinges at my heart. On one hand, sorrow fills me at the sight of our beautiful city, reduced to a fraction of what it once was.
On the other hand, I see the people, actually see them—their faces. For the first time in my life, it seems the people of Othian have put aside trying to become someone else.
Maybe it’s just that we’re all trying to survive, but I suppose that is part of it, isn’t it? Realizing the cosmetics and tricks used to hide ourselves were just weighing us down the whole time.
It hurts to look out on the crowd. At the children who gather in groups too large to all have the same parents—the ones who cling to each other because they have nowhere else to go. There are men and women wrapped in tattered mourning attire.
The crowd is a sea of sorrow.
It seems no one has been left unscathed by the pain of life taken too soon.
But when I look out into the crowd, I find something else too. A determination I didn’t realize was possible from a city I once considered so vain.
They wait, hushed voices echoing through the crowd.
And then the reason they’ve gathered arrives.
When the double doors open, and Evander steps out onto the balcony, a collective gasp ripples through the crowd.
Even I have to fight the one threatening to escape my lips.
I’ve gotten used to seeing Evander in royal attire. He was a prince, after all, when I met him. A lavish one at that.
But with all the excess Evander had flashed in his life before, it had only conveyed that—affluence. Wealth.
The Evander that stands before me is not that prince.
This is a king.
It’s in the way he carries himself, chin held high and face set on the horizon. I know the glistening crown weighs heavy on his head, though there’s no seeing that if you happen to be a casual onlooker, not with the way he holds his head steady.
His sea-green eyes, typically so full of mischief, are bright with sorrow, a rage I’d never seen until the day of Cecilia’s birth. I’m surprised it doesn’t frighten me, to glimpse this sort of rage in my husband, my gentle Evander.
But it’s not the type of rage a wife fears.
It’s the type of rage a wife’s enemies fear.
Evander raises a hand, and a hush falls over the crowd. Even Evander’s power-grabbing cousins shut their mouths long enough to listen.
“People of Dwellen,” says Evander, his voice sounding so much older than it used to. For a moment, it unsettles me, looking up onto the stage and seeing a male I don’t recognize. Like someone has taken my husband’s body, and I don’t know who he is anymore, and I can’t even blame him for it because all he’s doing is being what the Fates require of him. But then Evander grits his teeth, and a crease furrows his brow. I watch as he tries and fails to fight back the tears pooling at his lids.
I watch as Evander lets out a steadying exhale, the type that Marken would have chastised him for.
Next to me, my mother holds her breath and squeezes my hand gently.
Still, the crowd remains silent.
But then Evander’s gaze finds mine, and something in him changes.
He starts again, but this time he unclasps the majestic velvet cloak from around his neck. It flutters in the wind before it falls to the stage.
Evander shakes his shoulders out, scratching his neck, but his face relaxes. “Ah, that’s much better. I thought I was being strangled. I don’t know if any of you have worn a cloak recently, but there’s a reason they went out of style a century ago.”
My father, Fates bless that man, is the first to laugh, a deep rumble that echoes through the crowd, picking up stray friends on the way until gentle chuckles sweep over the people.
My chest is still tight, and I pull Cecilia closer, finding comfort in her warm weight against my chest. But as I watch Evander, I find he already looks more himself.
He runs his hands through his hair, causing the crown to shift askew.
Evander’s cousin Casper lets out a scoff, but the acrid look I shoot him is enough for him to widen his eyes and clamp his mouth shut.
This time when Evander speaks, there’s not a soul in the crowd who doesn’t listen. “I’m not my father. And I won’t try to be. I’m not that kind of king. I suppose I could pretend I am, but you’ve known my reputation for quite some time now, and I know there’s no erasing it from your memory. I’m not a hard male, not like he was. We all know it was my brother who was supposed to rule in my father’s place, but…”
My mother tenses up next to me. Evander is rambling, and the temporary attention his joke wrung out of the crowd is fading. He looks at me again, and I shake my head, hoping I can communicate without words.
