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For getting Lina back, Alys would have been loyal to Clare even if she’d been a murderer on par with Alaric’s bloody history. For all Alys knew, she was. But it seemed unlikely. The Arrendons trusted her, Fitz had gone from hating her to treating her with an almost-brotherly devotion, and Numair—well, her once-childhood friend was the current object of her search.
“Please do not get imprisoned for regicide three weeks before our wedding,” Lina begged, trotting to keep up with Alys's determined strides.
“It’s only regicide if I kill a king. A prince is simple murder.”
“I know you think you’re helping, but if she wanted us to intervene, she would have asked.”
“Clare wouldn’t ask for help if she was drowning and we were dry land.”
“At least don’t do this in public. You’ll only make it worse for her.”
Her fiancée had a point there. She finally found Numair—everyone was in the gymnasium again today—surrounded by his usual entourage. He saw her coming and straightened.
Too late to run, she thought. “You and I need to talk.” She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him out, down the hall and into the nearest room.
Lina raised her hands in the doorway. “I went with you to get him because I don’t want everyone thinking you’re sleeping with him before our wedding, but I am not going to be a part of this. I’ll see you at home.” She shut the door and walked out. Lina had a policy of keeping her hands clean whenever something didn’t fit with her deeply ingrained sense of right or wrong. It was one of the things Alys loved most about her.
Numair shrugged out of her hold. “To what do I owe the honor of being dragged into the cleaning closet?”
“What in Ferrian’s hells is wrong with you?”
“You’ll have to be more specific. The list is a little long, at this point.”
“She’s your friend. She’s your only friend. And you abandoned her like she was nothing. I want to know why.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the door. “I got bored with her. Women always grow tiresome, after a while.”
She moved before she had the conscious thought, her hand cracking against his cheek. Sharp anger lit his eyes, replacing indifference. He flexed his jaw and the anger extinguished, smothered once more beneath bored indifference. “If she’s having difficulty being jilted, tell her to deal with it like all the others do, instead of sending you to harass me. I hear publicly mocking me is quite therapeutic.”
She could not understand him. She could not understand what Clare had seen in him. “I sent myself because she won’t even tell me what happened. And no matter what you’ve done, she would never treat you like they do.”
His gaze wandered off, like the conversation couldn’t hold his attention. More likely he was already too drunk to focus. She snapped her fingers in his face. “You liked her—there’s no use lying, I know you did. So what happened?” For Clare’s sake, Alys would like to believe there was a reason this time. “Did your uncle threaten you?”
He sighed. “You want to know what happened?”
“I just said that I do,” she gritted out.
“I did like her. And then I kissed her”—he leaned toward her—“and I realized I’ve had better. Wasn’t any point in keeping on after that.” He opened the door and stepped out. “Stop fighting other people’s battles for them, Alys. Neither side appreciates it.”
“She’s mourning you, you bastard.” He stopped, his back to her, his hands clenching into fists. “Like you’re on your deathbed and you actually deserve the attention.”
His hands uncurled, fingers flexing. Curled back into fists. He walked away.
“Don’t you dare come to my wedding,” she yelled after him. Not after that.
Chapter Eighty
You Don’t Get to Miss Me
The mourning clothes helped—and they didn’t. Alaric had cast a single glance at her in them the first day, given her a knowing look, and proceeded to let her be. The court had likewise been happy to have an excuse to murmur sympathies—while never once bothering to ask who she was mourning—and then leave her alone, ostensibly out of respect for her pending loss.
As for Numair…he hadn’t had a reaction. Not surprise, not anger, not sadness. When she entered a room, he looked right through her, if he bothered to look at her at all. But even when he did, he wasn’t there. It was as if he’d vacated his body, leaving an automaton in his place that laughed and spoke and played his part without his input.
She hadn’t expected her actions—this display—to change anything. He’d made it clear, when they’d last spoken, that he wouldn’t change his mind. That they wouldn’t be going back to what they were. But she would have settled for a hint of regret. For the slightest indication that he felt anything.
Because no matter how she tried to cover it up with anger, there was a raw, festering hole inside her where he used to be, and as the weeks leading up to Alys and Lina’s wedding dragged by, there was little to distract her from it. She stopped circulating in public aside from the dinners she was still required to attend, because she couldn’t stop herself from looking for him. Every room she walked into, he was the first face she sought, and every time his gaze slipped by her like she wasn’t there, it cut something open inside her.
Sometimes she wondered if she’d imagined it all. Then she’d return to her room, where a single hibiscus flower, still refusing to wilt and die, proved she hadn’t. She almost set it on fire half-a-dozen times. She wanted him to let it die, so she could change her mourning clothes from gray to black and put it all to rest. Conversely, she wanted to return to the Arrendons’ home on the weekend and find the plant by her window had come back to life.
