“If that’s what you need to tell yourself,” he said simply.
He turned to go, and Kai kicked his chair back to round the table. They would not leave it there. They wouldnot. Not with Os tormenting himself over some obsessive ideal he thought Mael had wanted. Believing that Kai didn’tcarewhat Mael had wanted. Because, as angry as he may have been, it mattered what Os thought. It always had, and he could not abide it. Could notstandto let his cousin reach through the mess within him and draw out only the worst parts for them both to pick over.
“Os,” he called, moving around the table in a few short strides, and when his cousin didn’t stop, “Oswalt.”
The burst of panic boomed out of him, dragging a cold pulse of green from his chest so bright it painted the opposite wall, Oswalt’s shadow thrown crookedly across it. His cousin paused, but did not turn.
“You wanted to discuss a plan,” said Kai, a little numbly.
“I did. But we both know you’ll do as you like, Kai. You always do.”
Os started for the archway again but stopped abruptly when Kai laughed; not out of amusement, but the urgent need to release the devastating weight in his chest. It did not help, especially when his cousin turned slowly on the spot, a dark and expectant look on his face.
Silence hung between them for one stagnant, sickly heartbeat.
“You think anything I’ve done is because Iwantedto?” said Kai. “You imaginethisis what I wanted?”
Os considered him coldly, but Kai didn’t elaborate. He knew Os understood whatthismeant. This crown. This responsibility. This weight. This fate.
“No,” Os said finally. “This was your duty, and I’ll grant you that you tried to fulfil it. You made mistakes, and you made sacrifices. But it’s not what you wanted. What you wanted was her. Yourprincess.”
The title was bitter on his tongue, a vulgar word. Beneath a mask of calm, his chest was heaving, the only sign that angerhad finally caught up to him. Kai felt the echo of that anger in his own breath, fiery waves of it battering his lungs like seafoam beating down on the rocks.
“As for what Iimagine, Kai?” Os barrelled on, tone pitching with the barest hint of feeling. “I imagine you’re angry that Avette has something to hold over you, even after you set down your crown. I imagine you were relieved that Nua Laune took that choice from you. I imagine you’d hoped tofinallylive out the fairytale you’re so famed for.”
Kai took a thunderous step forward before he caught himself.
Fuck you,he wanted to say.
Instead, he managed between gritted teeth, “It must be so easy to pass judgment when you’re above such trivial things.”
Os staggered forward too, the sheer disbelief strong enough to trip him up where he’d stood stone still.
“Above such things?” Os breathed, dangerously low. Guilt immediately tightened Kai’s lungs. “I’ve never had a moment toconsidersuch things.” Another half-tripped step forward, a hand flying to his chest like he’d catch his own fall. “I have spent my entire adult life following you around so I could be there to pick you up when you fell too hard. Which you did, Kai. Time and time again.”
Kai shook his head, a short jolt, as though he could shake that truth away like a bothersome fly.
“I never asked you to—”
“Somebody fucking had to!”Oswalt exploded, both arms flying wide, the volume of his rage rocking Kai’s entire frame even as he tensed beneath it, refused to stagger back, to give an inch. His jaw clenched with the effort, creaked beneath the risingdrumbeat of his own rage. “You’re aking, you don’t have the luxury of falling to pieces every time a pretty girl breaks your heart.”
“Avette betrayed me,” Kai hissed, unable to withstand the blinding wave that propelled him forward, now nearly toe to toe with Oswalt’s squared-off frame. “I wasnotbroken over her, not for a single damned second.”
If they hadn’t been in each other’s faces, he might have missed it. The fleeting look, something between a sneer and a snarl, that pulled Oswalt’s lip back from his teeth.
“I am not talking about Avette, and you know it.”
A flicker of acid green lit the space between them; he relished the hiss that moved up his lungs, even as it brushed past the very crack in his heart that his cousin spoke of. The crack that was as much his own doing as it was Adeline’s. The crack that had nothing to do with his Court, or his people, or Oswalt, or his Mother-damnedduty.
“What I know, Os, is that you can go fuck yourself.”
Os flinched.
Kaiflinched.
The pressure in his chest released and immediately rebounded, an elastic snap spreading an unbearable ache through his entire ribcage. The venom of those words tasted all wrong on his tongue, but they were far too bitter to swallow back, and the slow collapse of Oswalt’s face was lit in the same sickly glow that numbed Kai’s skin.
“What ishappening?”
