I tense, but it’s too late to still myself. Everyone’s head turns to me, and there’s no hiding the fact I’ve been eavesdropping.

Evander practically jumps from his seat. He looks ill, and I’m reminded of the time I dragged him back from a seedy tavern after he drunkenly stumbled into a gang of ruffians.

His sea-green eyes are laced with sorrow as he looks at me. “Blaise, I’m so sorry,” he says, nearing the edge of the bed. I flinch at his touch when he takes my hand, and pain flashes across his face as he misinterprets my reaction and pulls away.

He assumes I’m afraid of him after he locked me up in the dungeons for his wife’s safety. He doesn’t realize his touch hurts so, so badly because it reminds me of Nox. I force a carefree smile to my lips, and because I can’t stand the distress on his face, say, “Your hands are freezing, Andy.”

The strain in his jaw relaxes, and he lets out a reticent laugh, one that brings a genuine smile to my face. Then he rolls his eyes, and for a moment, I feel that my heart might explode. “My apologies,” he chuckles, that full, beautiful grin overtaking his features.

I smile back, and it’s in that moment I realize exactly how Andy’s felt for me my whole life, because I feel it, too.

I wonder how much happier I could have been all those years if I’d only accepted the love he was willing to give, and returned it in measure.

Evander sits at the foot of my bed, crushing my toes with his butt when he does it, and the familiar annoyance that boils my blood almost has me sobbing again.

Ellie lets out an exasperated laugh as well, even as she rubs at the redness in her eyes, and for a moment, it’s just the three of us, and the king and queen of Naenden are realms away.

It’s the Queen of Naenden whose voice punctures the moment. “Blaise, if you’re ready, we’d like to discuss the magic that inhabits your body.”

I must go still, because Evander looks at me warily.

“I’m not entirely sure, but I figure it’s gone,” I say, rather flatly. As if it doesn’t matter to me that the parasite that has plagued my body for months now has freed me from its clutches.

The queen lifts the brow over her remaining hazel eye. “Gone? How?”

I readjust myself in bed, pushing myself against the headboard. “Because I died. Obviously,” I say, pointing to the shadows that have developed underneath my eyes.

Evander flinches, and Ellie’s eyes go wide. Even the King of Naenden has the good sense to look alarmed, but Asha simply frowns, and for a moment, she seems lost in thought before saying, “He claims that would work.”

If anyone else in the room is alarmed that Asha seems to be communicating with someone the rest of us can neither see nor hear, no one displays any such signs.

It shouldn’t comfort me, but sometimes it’s nice not to be the only freak in the room.

“Is anyone going to explain to me who this mysterious he is that you’re conversing with about my demise?” I ask.

Evander is the first to answer. “Asha here has a magic inside her, similar to your parasite.”

“Oh. Right.” I remember now. Evander had meant to contact the queen about her magic in an effort to find a way to extract the parasite from my mind, but I’d been kidnapped by the queen before his plans could ever come to fruition.

“You don’t remember?” he asks, concern wrinkling the skin around his eyes.

“Something about being kidnapped, tortured, experimented on, dying, and subsequently becoming a murderer must have caused it to slip from my mind,” I say through my teeth.

The blood drains from Evander’s face. “Blaise.”

“So you’re possessed too?” I ask, quickly averting my attention back to Asha. It’s one thing to be glad for confirmation that I’m rid of the parasite, but I’m also suddenly glad to have someone who understands. It’s cruel and terrible, and I shouldn’t be happy about it, but I am.

The queen smiles, and though the scars on her face are terrifying, her smile is not. “I suppose I am.” She lets out a laugh. “My magic is not fond of the term, though. He claims we have a symbiotic relationship.”

The fondness with which she speaks about her magic immediately wipes away any feeling I possessed of mutual pain, though that’s probably not fair to her. Those scars had to come from somewhere, after all.

Still, I push to know more, eager to avoid the subject of my death, and sure both Evander and Ellie, who look as though they might shoot to my side to check my pulse any minute now, will steer it back in that direction as soon as I give them breathing room to speak.

“So your magic speaks to you? And it—he—doesn’t control you?”

Asha pauses and presses her lips together. “Yes, he’s been with me a long while, since I was a child. He never spoke to me directly until he deemed it useful to do so.” She rolls her one eye, and a satisfied smile breaks across her lips—the look of someone who has successfully managed to rile a loved one. “But yes, I suppose he can be a bit controlling.” She pauses, and that wicked grin returns before she says, “I will do no such thing. Or are you going to deny that you take control of my voice against my will when you deem it necessary?”

A moment of silence, then the queen says with a smirk, “That’s what I thought.”

Kiran groans and leans back in his chair, tipping his bearded chin upward. “She does this constantly—forgets the rest of us can’t hear it.”

There’s exasperation in his tone, but when his wife sticks her tongue through her teeth and interlaces her fingers into his, a hint of a smile breaks the hard line of his lips.

“How did you get your magic?” I ask, but the queen’s eye flickers with understanding, and I know I’ve been caught.

“It’s our turn to ask a question,” she says, and my heart plummets as I’m forced to remember my and Nox’s games. “Who took you, how did you die, and if you died, how are you speaking to us now?”

“That’s three questions,” I say, shifting uncomfortably.

“I appreciate you taking the time to count them for me,” says Queen Asha, amusement curving her lips. There’s a challenge there, but not the unfriendly sort, and I find it a bit refreshing that she doesn’t feel the need to treat me like a crumbling autumn leaf in her palm.

So I tell them. I tell them of my stepmother selling me to Queen Abra, which results in a series of confused looks being exchanged across the room between my companions. I tell them of the experiments to extract the parasite from my mind and body, though I leave out the details of Nox and Gunter, neglecting to mention either of them by name. There’s something about the way Evander’s entire body has gone stiff on the base of the bed that has me wishing to keep Nox’s crimes toward me tucked close to my heart.

I might never see him again, but I’m self-aware enough to know I’ll be crushed if Evander ever speaks an ill word against him.

Of course, I have to tell them there was a fae there who had been Turned into something else, something different. That the parasite used her own knowledge of the magical properties in his blood to control him, to trick him into finding a way to bind her to my body instead of extracting her.

Asha’s magic seems to find this part of the story most disturbing, and the shiver that quakes through her does not fit with any of the queen’s previous expressions.

When I get to the part about my death, Evander and Ellie both still, and even Kiran’s breathing takes an uptick.

The queen just looks at me with shared understanding.

I skim over the part about why Abra wished to send me away, but Evander’s ears perk at this part, and I can tell he’ll hound me about it later.

When I get to the part about Clarissa, about why I was visiting her in the first place, Kiran interjects. “If you wish to share that information with us, you’re welcome. But we won’t interrogate you about it.”

I nod my head and find myself indebted to the male I once supposed to be cruel.

Of course, I now know he also has a secret.

A secret that seeps through his fingertips.

Perhaps he’s offering me my privacy with the expectation I’ll return the favor, but that seems unlikely. It hadn’t benefitted him at all to calm me last night, yet he’d done it anyway, regardless of the fact that he seems to prefer to keep his power hidden from common knowledge.

He risked his secret so I could grasp onto a moment of peace. A moment to breathe underneath the crashing wake of grief that might have drowned me without the gentle reprieve.

I wonder then if the king might be kind.