A moment after the king places me down, someone starts wrestling with the sheets, pulling them out from under my limp body and tucking them over my shivering shoulders. There’s a gentle pressure on the bed as someone climbs in and wraps their warm arms around me.
I know without opening my eyes that it’s Ellie. She’s always smelled like rainwater and lavender, and it’s simple to recognize the sweet aroma of her blood as it slips through her veins.
I wish I didn’t know that. I hate myself for imagining what her blood would taste like on my lips.
“You should go,” I whisper, my throat too dry and hoarse for how much blood I’ve consumed.
A hand slips into mine as Ellie pulls it close to her chest. She doesn’t know I can feel her heart beating against my palm, or maybe she does, but she doesn’t understand what that means. The danger it puts her in.
“She kept you locked up in there, didn’t she? In that room?”
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.
“And then that wretched magic inside you; it locked you up too.”
I swallow, tears stinging the edges of my eyes.
It’s her next statement that breaks me.
“And then we locked you up.”
I start to tell Ellie that I deserved it, but I can’t quite form the words over the lump rising in my throat.
“You were speaking of a baby earlier. Of a baby your stepmother took from you.”
I’m sobbing now, and I don’t even realize it until my chest starts to convulse. “It was stillborn,” I whisper, “She…she didn’t check. She didn’t even look to see if it was a boy or a girl before she sent it away. But when I woke, she told me it had lived. That if I worked at the palace, sent her my paychecks, that one day she’d tell me where my baby was…I thought they were safe…I thought my baby… I didn’t mean to kill her,” I whisper.
When I open my eyes, I can hardly stand the look in Ellie’s eyes. It’s dark in the room, but I can see every tear mark staining her brown skin as she cries with me.
Ellie doesn’t smile; it’s more like a grimace. “I know you didn’t.”
“You shouldn’t be here. I’m not myself anymore. Something happened.”
“I know,” says Ellie, but she’s still stroking my hair. I shouldn’t let myself be comforted by her touch, not when Ellie Payne should hate me. Not when she deserves to hate me.
But I want so badly to be touched, to be held, so I let her.
“You don’t understand. You should be afraid of me. I could hurt you.” Clarissa’s blood might have satiated my hunger for the moment, but if I’ve learned anything from Nox, it’s that the hunger tends to return at the worst of times.
Ellie cups my cheeks in her palm, her brown eyes glinting in the light of the small tea candle beside the bed. “I’ve been frightened, Blaise. Ever since the guard came barreling into the hall and said you were gone, that someone had taken you. I’ve been terrified that I’d never see you again, that something awful was happening to you. We’ve been searching, day and night, but the trail went cold. It’s like you just vanished. We’ve had people looking everywhere for you. Tonight when a guard reported he’d seen someone sneaking into your father’s manor, we couldn’t even bring ourselves to hope.” She lets out a labored exhale as she fights back a sob and traces the dark circles underneath my eyes with her thumbs. “The only thing I’m afraid of is losing you again. Of losing my friend.”
My heart cracks wide open at the love I don’t deserve. “I’m so afraid I’ll hurt you again.”
A pained smile crosses her full lips. “You will,” she says, “and I’ll hurt you again too. I think maybe that’s part of it. Just something we’ll have to learn to get over.”
So I let Ellie hold me as I cry, as I mourn my baby and my humanity and Nox and all I’ve lost.
She tucks me into her chest and when I feel her heart pumping against my ear and my teeth jabbing through my gums at the smell, I silently tell them to go away and leave my friend alone.
And they do.
CHAPTER 51
BLAISE
I wake to whisperings, low and soft. Some rapid and concerned. Others weary and labored.
“She might not be in the best condition to answer your questions when she wakes,” says Andy.
“You’re coddling the girl as if she’s a child, but she’s killed a woman and clearly is not,” says a male with a low growl who I suppose is the King of Naenden. It’s strange to hear the condemnation in his voice when just last night, his touch seeped peace and comfort into my very bones.
I can’t decide if this makes me fear him less or more.
“Oh, and you’re one to point fingers regarding murder,” seethes Evander, and with my senses heightened, I feel Ellie’s hand grasp onto his arm.
I feel Queen Asha’s do the same with her husband, and though she’s yet to speak, it immediately cools the room.
When the king answers, his voice is calm. Even. “I don’t mean to condemn the girl. I only mean she is no longer the child you seem convinced that she is. Regardless of her motivations, regardless of whether that loathsome woman deserved it, your friend has taken the life of another. It will only do her more harm if you refuse to acknowledge how that has inherently altered her soul.”
Something pricks at my chest, or maybe it’s the tears stinging at my eyes.
I’ve only ever heard horror stories about the King of Naenden. It wasn’t much longer than a year ago that he, in a fit of rage, determined to take a bride from the humans of his kingdom, only to sacrifice her the night of the wedding, a process he meant to repeat every mooncycle.
Except Queen Asha had ruined his plans, soiled his intentions, wrecked his world.
I wonder if he surprised her with the same softness he’s shown me, or if it was the other way around. If she was the one to bring it out in him.
There’s something about that idea that makes me ache for Nox, but I shove his memory from my mind.
It’s no use thinking of him when I swore never to return.
When he hasn’t followed me.
I betrayed him when I kept the information of my inevitable death to myself, and he will never forgive me.
I’m learning to live with my mistakes, but they aren’t the best of companions.
I peek my eyes open and glimpse Evander running his fingers through his tan hair. It’s still dark in the room. Someone must have taken my mutterings seriously last night, because I’m in Evander’s chambers, where he prefers his curtains to be two fistfuls thick from his hangover days, and the curtains are drawn to block out the sunlight. The room is lit by a dozen flickering candles, and I can’t shake the feeling that an exorcism is about to occur.
I can’t push away the vision of bone-white runes painted on the floor, candles lighting those too.
“Still,” says the Naenden queen, “Blaise is no longer a child, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be ready to explain what happened to her when she wakes. We have no idea when her mind will recover.”
Ellie gives a reticent huff. She looks lovely, because it’s impossible for Ellie not to look lovely, but she hasn’t dressed for the day yet. She’s wearing a pale gold robe she must have grabbed from the closet to cover herself when she awoke. It occurs to me that, while this is Evander’s old room, it is likely that he and Ellie moved into a larger suite after they married. That she’s in a robe because she has no clothes in this particular closet, meaning she hasn’t left my side in hours. Something bulges in my throat.
“She spoke to me plainly last night,” Ellie says. “She was upset. Quite distressed, really. But she seemed in her right mind. I’m concerned with… Just be gentle when you question her.”
I can tell Ellie’s words are directed toward the king, but the room doesn’t heat again, so he must not take offense. “I’m sure you, your husband, and my wife will all make sure of that,” he says, though there’s no avarice in his tone. “In fact, it seems now is the perfect time to begin, if Blaise is willing.”
