I find Harek and ask for a room. I don’t look for Torgan.
In the morning, I take the ledgers home.
24
TORGAN
Lissy leaves at first light.
I watch from the study window because I don't trust myself in the courtyard.
Harek loads Brynna’s chest of ledgers onto the cart. Brynna hands up her satchel of summary tables and gives the driver strict instructions about damp. Lissy climbs onto the bench with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, looking small. Alone.
I feel like I should be there, in some way, to help her with this next part.
But she doesn't look up at the window.
She said she thinks she loves me.
She said it with her whole face coming apart. Then she blamed the curse for tearing us apart and walked away before I could give her a reason to doubt it.
I let her go.
Every word she threw at me was true, and I won’t argue with the truth because it's cutting me open, allowing me to examine every horrid part of me. I don’t like what I see, and I know that Lissy doesn’t, either.
So I watch the woman I love leave. I watch until I can no longer make the shape of Lissy’s cart. Until she’s well and truly gone. Hopefully not for forever from my life.
Someone knocks.
Harek puts his head through the study door. He looks a little stricken, which is completely unlike Harek. "My lord. The Voss boy is at the gate."
"Princeton?" I'm on my feet before I make the decision to stand.
Harek shakes his head. "The younger one. Caden." He lets out a breath. "Your lady mother sent word that he's welcome inside. She says whatever his family's done, the boy's grief is honest."
That sounds like Ma. Furious enough to skin a duke, but unwilling to leave his son in the cold for something he didn't do.
"He asked to see Lady Mirelle instead of coming in," Harek continues. "She sent back that she has nothing to discuss with him. He asked again. Same answer."
Dammit, Mirelle. I wish I could just shake her and have the fog clear from her mind. "Where is he now?"
"Still at the gate. He won't come in, and he won't leave. He's standing in the road."
I take my coat from its hook.
Without the vial, it feels light, but knowing the pain that my decisions have caused, I feel the weight more than anything I’ve ever felt before.
I’ll feel it for the rest of my life.
"I'll go to him."
Caden lookslike a man who walked all the way to Oakenshade Hall. One look at him, I can tell that he did, indeed, walk here. His boots are ruined with mud past the ankles. He looks haunted and tired. His coat hangs open despite the cold, and one bare hand grips a folded letter. Even at this distance, I catch glimpses of the writing.
Mirelle’s letter to him. The one where she ended everything for them.
I caused this.
Even if I didn’t tip the vial into Mirelle’s goblet, I caused this. The guilt threatens to eat me alive.
