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She glanced at me, and I smiled.
“I’m happy for you, Mom. Whatever it is you and Zita will end up being, I just want you to be in a good space.”
Mom nodded and looked ahead. “I’m in a very good space.”
That was all I wanted for her.
“What about you?” she asked. “You don’t seem nearly as happy today as I thought you’d be.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s going on between me and Erol. One moment, I think he likes me, and he wants to figure out what things can be between us—the power gets so strong, and there’s something there, I know there is. The next moment, he acts like he wants nothing to do with me. I don’t understand how it works.” I sighed. “You told me to follow my heart, but what do I do when my head gets in the way?”
“It’s a tough one. I’m sorry. Love and relationships are always difficult to navigate, whether you’re a teenager just coming into womanhood, or you’ve been around for half a millennium.”
She was right about that—it didn’t seem nearly as easy to figure things out with Erol as I’d thought it would be.
I didn’t understand why he’d pushed me away last night. The sexual tension between us had been intense, and I’d wanted him so badly. There had been no doubt that he’d wanted me, too. When he’d pushed me away, I’d wondered if it was because I’d told him I’d never been with a man before, but it couldn’t be about that. Our power had mixed together, creating something that couldn’t exist without things being just right between us. The magic wouldn’t respond the way it did when we were together if the union wasn’t right. Did Erol feel the same way about it?
What if it was right, but his Conjurite magic fought it, and he was just leading me on, playing games? It was the nature of Conjurite magic to be untrustworthy, to cause pain, to destroy.
“I don’t know how to keep seeing him as the person of light I see beneath all the darkness, and how to know if the darkness is too much. I’m terrified that it will override everything that’s good about him, and it will be tucked so far away, it won’t matter that it’s there. The way it used to be, before, when he kept us in the dungeon and treated us the way he did.”
I glanced at my mom after admitting my fear, willing her to give me an answer that would make me feel better.
“It’s good to guard your heart and not to jump into something without weighing all the facts. You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders, you’ve always looked at the world through a logical lens. Just remember, my darling, that Erol helped us escape. He may have held us captive, and he had a hand in all the terrible things that happened to us, but if the good wasn’t in him and the darkness had been too much to let it all out…he would never have done something as dangerous as letting us go free. The goodness might be hard to find sometimes, but he did a good thing, then. He’s capable of it now, too.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. Erol had helped us escape, even though he’d been the king’s right-hand man, the one doing the torturing, the one keeping us captive in dire conditions. He’d helped us so that Ellie could go back to Ren, and they could win the war against Palgia.
If Erol had been only evil, or if his goodness had been too weak to push through, that would never have happened. It had been the darkest of times for him, too.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said finally, taking what she’d said about him to heart.
I could see Erol as a male with goodness in him—my judgement of character wouldn’t be wrong.
That didn’t mean that he didn’t have a choice in the matter. I had to keep reminding myself that no matter how badly he felt about the things he’d done, he could still decide to give into the darkness. I still had to be sure that whatever happened between us, whether he pushed me away or drew me closer, it was his choice.
He could push the darkness away and choose to pursue the light, and we would be there to help him. The flipside was that he could also allow the darkness to take a hold of him, be in control, and then he would only toy with me without ever giving me an answer or a clear message about what he wanted.
I hated that I didn’t know what it was that I saw when he pushed me away. I hated that I didn’t know who to trust—the good man within, or the darkness that ruled him.
18
EROL
Iwalked to the formal sitting room I’d set up for Hazel and Vanya to help the Conjurites. I wanted to see how they did it.
Since I’d been with Hazel that night after our supper, I’d thought long and hard about what it meant to give up the darkness. I couldn’t break free from it without losing everything that mattered to me, but I wanted my people—soon to be Rainier’s people completely—to be free. They deserved that, and if I was the only one that had to live in darkness…
It was a small price to pay for so many lives to be saved.
Hazel had told me that it took a long time to free the Conjurites from the darkness. When Ellie had mentioned it first, and Rainier had said he’d had trust in Vanya and Hazel to figure it out, I’d been skeptical. Ten people, compared to an entire kingdom, was child’s play. It had sounded impossible then and still sounded like a tall order now.
The difference was that I wanted it, now more than ever. I’d spent time with Hazel, I’d seen the way she, Vanya, and Zita interacted with each other, and the light was attractive, magnetic. The light was home.
I wanted it for myself, so badly. Not only because it would give me a kingdom, but because when I saw Hazel talk about things the way she did, when I felt the magic she displayed, I yearned for that kind of warmth again.
This wasn’t about me anymore. It was about a bigger picture, and they were here to fulfill that bigger picture.
When I stepped into the room, Vanya and Hazel looked up.
