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“It’s that damned prophecy. It…” She shook her head, rising from the bed. Her feet stalked across the floorboards, unable to tame the jumbled energy coursing through her. “Everyone thought the prophecy, the evil waiting to surface, was guaranteed.”
She grabbed the diary from Marcellus’ hands and opened it, pointing to a single word. “You see this? May. For this here may not last. It was never a given. This prophecy… It’s the cause of everything. All the horrors, the death—the suffering. Lavender is not evil by design. My ancestors only focused on the potential for chaos and couldn’t see it for what it was. A warning. Had they trusted themselves, their beliefs, none of this would have ever happened. But because they were so obsessed with the evil it spoke of… they created it. My parents,” her voice cracked, “knew about it. They thought it was Lavender who had the potential for evil so they put me on the throne. And Lavender knew. My sister knew that our parents thought she was evil. She tried so hard to prove them wrong, to make me out as the bad guy just so she could stomach the knowledge that she was potentially fated to ruin the kingdom. But it was already too late. The damage was done. In Lavender’s desperation to prove herself worthy, she ended up falling right into their worst expectations.”
Thicket gripped the diary. Gripped it so hard she feared it might tear in two. “The worst part is that it had never even been about me and Lavender. It could have been anybody. If my parents had just believed in Lavender instead of this prophecy—if they had just let her be queen—all of this could have been avoided. But they didn’t, and now the prophecy is fulfilled. The evil has been conquered and all has been righted. And now, I have to kill my sister because she’s right. We can’t keep her locked up forever. Eventually, she’ll escape and everything will start all over again and all of this would have been for nothing.”
Thicket ground her teeth, cursing the stupid, stupid words. The stupid prophecy.
The cat had been right. Knowing anything about the prophecy… It was damning.
“But I can’t just accept that killing her is the right thing to do,” Thicket went on, trying to make sense of the battle inside her head. “She’s a person, a victim of others’ false pretenses. I—I don’t know what to do. I can’t let her hurt anyone else, but she doesn’t deserve to die.” She laughed deliriously, running a hand through her curls. “Or am I just being naive?”
The Council wanted to kill Lavender. To them, the ends justified the means. The life of one versus the life of thousands… It could never compare.
But Lavender was just like her. Lost, misunderstood, without a place in this world… How could she take her life when so much of it had already been robbed from her?
How could she risk the lives of her people, her friends?
For a long moment, Marcellus didn’t speak. Didn’t even move. Then, he stood and closed the space between them so all that remained was a breath of distance. From this close, she noticed a ring of light brown hug his irises, flecked with the slightest glitter of gold.
Butterflies… electric butterflies fluttered in her stomach, increasing tenfold when he said, “I don’t think you should kill her.”
“Why?” Thicket breathed. “She killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. She killed your family,” she added, the words barely a whisper.
“Because,” he said. “You don’t feel right doing so. Isn’t that reason enough?”
Her heart swelled and she felt as if her chest would combust, too small to confine the emotions flooding her. Devouring her.
Destroying her, piece by piece.
“What happened?” she asked. “While I was under the sleeping curse? How did you manage to break free of Enola’s control?”
Marcellus glanced down at his hand. “I’m still not sure myself. I remember wanting to save you. To help you in any way I could—even if it killed me. Then, my piranha changed. It turned blue.”
Thicket’s breath hitched, remembering what Elian had told her about the legends of warriors who had changed the color of their fire in order to save the ones they loved.
“Is it still blue?” she dared to ask. “Your fire?”
Marcellus summoned his piranha. It swam around Thicket’s head, the same dark crimson it had been at the farmhouse. Thicket smiled, running her finger along its pointed fins. “I think red suits you just fine,” she said.
Marcellus’ throat bobbed, a flicker of something passing across his expression, as though his emotions were just beyond the wall he was still doing his best to cling to.
“You told me I could thank you if I returned in one piece,” she whispered.
“I did.” Marcellus reached a hand out, grabbing a lock of her hair. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think as he twirled it around his finger, watching it loop around and around. He slid his attention to her, roaming across her face, before falling to her lips.
Thicket sucked in a breath, drawing back sharply. The ring tied to the strap of her sword shifted, metal clinking against metal.
Her hair slipped from Marcellus’ fingers as he stared at the ring. His jaw ticked for a harsh second. “Why did you come here, come to me, about this? Why not tell Caspian—or wait for Delmore to return?”
Thicket didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond.
Marcellus’ lips tightened. “When you and Delmore finally talk, what are you going to say to him?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Do you love him?”
Slowly, heart thudding, she looked up at him. His gaze still lingered on the ring. If the words hadn’t crawled into her ears, she didn’t think there would have been any evidence he said anything at all. She almost believed he hadn’t with how silent and immobile he was. But she knew Marcellus. Knew he was never one to cross such lines with her. Many other lines, perhaps, but not this one. She knew he would only say it once, so softly it could have just been a whisper of wind.
