“Why would she order you to kill her? Why not take her own life then? She wouldn’t have asked you… that.” She shakes her head, but her gaze holds mine.
“You know our laws about suicide.” She would have been resurrected, punished, and then forced into the fairy ring anyway.
Evangeline’s eyes narrow as she cuts off my air.
There is a moment of uncertainty in her, a madness that makes my skin crawl.
Snarling, she flings herself back and clenches her fists tight at her sides. Her chest heaving, her eyes are wet with a pain she’s carried on her own for over twenty years. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“She didn’t want you to remember her as a coward.”
She flinches, and I know I’ve struck her deeper than any knife ever has. Evangeline wasn’t quiet about her thoughts on suicideas we fought the Vylians together. She saw those who did it as selfish cowards.
Breathing out heavily, I ask, “Will you marry me or not?”
“I never would’ve thought her a coward,” she says softly, and I wonder who she’s trying to convince: me or her. “You could’ve told me.”
“You already knew.” Deep down, she must’ve. Otherwise, she would’ve killed me a long time ago.
“I loved her like a sister.”
“I know.”
Her eyes drop to the scar on my hand. After a moment, she lifts them back to me. “Did Jace know she wanted to marry him before...?”
I shake my head. It was a secret I’d deliberately kept from him until recently, knowing he wouldn’t have been able to go through with it otherwise. “He does now though.”
“And he hasn’t killed you?”
“Aurelia gave him an order not to.” I pause, looking into her eyes. “Just like she gave you one.”
Her lips tighten, and she glances away for the first time ever. “She told Deirdre and I to look after you, yes.”
“Why?”
She looks back at me with a dry expression. “Because she loved you, idiot.”
The guilt on my shoulders brush those words off. I wasn’t deserving of her love. She was my little sister, the rightful heir of Raza, and I failed her in every way.
Unable to sit still any longer, I rise to my feet. “Is that a yes then?”
“With a proposal as romantic as that, how can I not?”
“Then the wedding is in three weeks’ time.” Evangeline needs at least that long to choose her successor to FI-9. “I’ll be using a proxy.”
She snorts. “As if I would actually attend.”
“You once dreamed of having a big wedding.”
“I once dreamed of Aurelia as queen.”
“So did I.”
She glances away. Two times in one night… That has to be a record. Evangeline never flinches. She’d stare down the gods of death themselves if they ever had the courage to take her. “Why did she do it?” she asks, still looking away.
“She didn’t think she’d be a good queen.” She didn’t want the duties that came with it, the burden. Forced into war at thirteen, she had spent five years deciding soldiers’ fates on the front lines against the Vylians. She had watched friends die one after the other due to orders she’d given. She had played god for a short time, choosing who lived and died, and it had broken her. She’d wanted to save everyone, and that had often led to brash choices that had seen even more dead.
I begged her not to kill herself, telling her we could rule together, where I made the tactical decisions in the shadows, but there was too much guilt on her shoulders. “And she knew she couldn’t kill Seqora.”
