“What are you thinking about, little sparrow?” I finally asked, opening my eyes.
I found her already watching me.
Smiling, she said, “How did you know I wasn’t sleeping?”
“I remember how you sound when you sleep, and this isn’t it.”
Her smile fell away and her eyes glazed with unshed tears.
“Tell me why you said his name,” she whispered. “When the guards brought you to the throne room.”
She was talking about Evander again, and this time, I couldn’t keep it inside.
“Because when I looked into Keradoc’s eyes, I thought I saw Evander’s ghost.” I sighed and shook my head. “I know how it sounds, Haley. The drugs talking, right? Or some trick of Keradoc’s meant to confuse me. Iknowthat now—so fucking obvious, right? But in that moment? I looked up into the face of the man who’d bested us, and I swore I saw… someone else.”
“I… I saw someone else too, Elian. His face, his eyes… They kept changing. I thought… I thought he was you, and I—”
“What?” I sat up, my heart thudding in my chest.
“There’s something I need to tell you. I don’t know why I feel guilty… I mean, it’s not like you and I are together, or… But I feel like you need to know, and it’s…” She was babbling, talking a mile-a-minute, my heart jackhammering with every word, still hoping I hadn’t heard her right, still hoping this story would end some other fucking way, and then…
“I kissed him, Elian,” she said. “The night of the feast, when Keradoc first brought me to the throne room alone, I kissed him.”
Fury burned through me. It was one thing to see her chatting him up in the library, offering him tea. It was one thing to see the way he looked at her.
But this?
Knowing she’d fuckingkissedhim?
“Why are you telling me this?” I ground out, practically throwing myself out of the bed.
“He was wearing your face!” she said, as if that explained it. She followed me out of bed, followed me right into the common room. “Your eyes!”
“You kissed a warlord because he glamoured himself to look like me? Is that supposed to—”
“Elian.” She reached up and cupped my face, forcing me to look at her. “I kissed him because hewasyou. At least, that’s what I believed. God, it was all so confusing. I hadn’t seen you in days, and suddenly there you were. You—I mean, he—he’d taken me to the throne room. We were alone. I saw the glamour slip away, or—I don’t know. Maybe he is Keradoc and your face was the glamour, but either way, in my mind, it was you.”
I pulled out of her touch, turning my back on her. I couldn’t look into those eyes right now, couldn’t see the passion and longing in them, knowing that fae-fucking bastard had looked into those same eyes and seen those exact same things.
“Say something,” she whispered. “Please.”
“Fine. You want me to say something? Here it is, sparrow. I wish you’d never told me. I wish I didn’t have to live the rest of my immortal life with that image stuck in my fucking brain. I wish…” I shoved my hands through my hair, ready to tear it all out. “Keradoc isn’t just a warlord and a murderer, Haley. He’s worse—so much worse.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What could be worse?”
“He’s a trafficker, Haley. He steals fae kids from their home realms, enslaves them, and sells them off to his rich, noble friends. So yeah, you want to know what happened to Evander? Here’s an idea—the next time you open your mouth for that fucking bastard Keradoc, why don’t you askhimwhat happened instead of letting him stick his tongue down your throat.”
I stormed out of that room, down the gallery hallway, down the stairs, and out into the dark streets of Amaranth City.
And there, in the loneliest fucking corner in the darkest, dankest alley I could find, I fell to my knees and screamed into the night until my throat bled and the ghosts in my heart fell still.
25
HALEY
My head clanged as if the bells of every cathedral in Italy had been relocated to the inside of my skull.
I wondered if Nona had something to do with it—a scolding from the great beyond. I smiled at the thought.
