AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’d rather you didn’t speak of her at all,” I snap. “Unless you’d like to tell me what drove my brilliant cousin to feel that her best option was absconding in the freezing night, chancing the frigid temperatures in an unknown land rather than go back to whatever life the two of you had together.”
Something like pain flits through his gaze, but I’m not sure I believe it. I’m not sure I even want to. So instead, I drive the knife in deeper.
“What was she doing, far enough from you that it took you several hours to catch up to her? Was she trying to get away from you?”
“I don’t know.” His features are neutral, but I can practically smell the lie.
“Really? Then tell me, what did you do to her that she would rather risk her life, alone, than tell you where she was going that night?”
For the first time, he looks affected by something I’ve said. Tension permeates the carriage like a dense, impenetrable fog.
“I won’t pretend I was a good husband to her,” Einar responds after several silent moments. His carefully blank face is almost enough to make me buy into the undercurrent of grief I sense there. Almost. “But I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then why?” The words barely come out a whisper.
“I don’t know why.” His voice is gentle, and I hate it.
I want him to scream and rage and be the monster to me that he must have been to her.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Zaina played her cards close to her chest.”
No, he doesn’t. Which begs the question, why did he?
I examine his features, turning over what he said in my mind. His icy blue eyes are sincere, but there is something in them that I can’t bring myself to believe, not entirely. Perhaps he isn’t lying, but he isn’t quite telling the truth either.
It’s a struggle, finding a way to ask him for more without revealing too much of my own. The carriage shifts, the wheels going from packed earth to cobblestone, and I bite back a curse.
Unless I want to explain my simple outfit and my presence in Einar’s carriage to the entire castle, I’m out of time, and I haven’t gotten any real answers yet.
“One last question,” I ask him.
He nods warily.
“Did you love her?” I don’t know why I bother to ask that, when three months is hardly enough time to love anyone.
To see if he’ll lie about it? To see what it will look like when he does?
Einar freezes. Whatever he had been expecting me to ask, I get the feeling I have finally caught him completely off guard. He sucks in a breath like he’s about to answer, then lets it out in a whoosh of air.
When he’s deliberated too long and I’m well and truly out of time, I scoff.
“That’s what I thought. Then don’t pretend to grieve her,Your Majesty.” I open the carriage door, preparing to hop out.
“Wait,” he says, and I turn expectantly. “My relationship with Zaina was... complicated.Shewas complicated.” He massages the bridge of his nose, his eyes going distant.
“I don’t even know why I asked,” I mutter. “Obviously you didn’t, but it’s not like she loved you, either. Love really doesn’t factor into our lives.”
“That isn’t true,” he says sharply, and for a moment I think he’s offended that I said she didn’t love him. But he looks at me earnestly. “Regardless of how she felt about me, I know that she loved the girls she called her sisters. More than she loved herself.” There’s real emotion in his voice now, and I’m not sure how to take it. “She would have done anything for you.”
Anything except come back to us.
Abruptly, I realize there is nowhere in the world I want to be less than in this carriage with this man who I’m beginning to suspect actually did care for my sister.
I am so desperate to get away from the accusations and regret invading every inch of this space, I don’t even bother to respond to him. I peek out the window, waiting for the bushes I know are near the castle gates before slipping out of the carriage and shutting the door behind me.
If I’m right about what happened, and if the king isn’t to blame for her taking her own life, then who or what is?
The years we spent together should have been enough time for me to understand her. I was just too busy competing with her to pay attention.
Now she’s dead. She folded her hand, but I’m the one who lost.
