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“Your king has very apt timing,” she said with a sly smile. “Let us move on, shall we? To when you vowed to forget him.”
I flinched, unable to look at her, not wanting to see those frighteningly familiar eyes as she forced me to face every terrible thing I had done.
“When you vowed to forget the person who loves you so deeply, who has loved you for most of your life, who needed you because he had nothing else to keep himself from crumbling into dust. Yet you could turn your back on him so easily.”
I shuddered, wrapping my arms around myself as if they would fend off her words. “I—I was hurt and angry. I thought he—”
“You vowed to forget him because you wanted to hurt him. And you did.”
My mouth trembled, a tear dripping down my cheek. “B-but I thought he’d—”
“Do you know how many years it had been since he’d let himself cry before that night? He couldn’t stop after that. He had lost the only thing that mattered to him because you were angry. He suffered because of what you did. He felt nothing but pain and despair for months because of you.”
“Stop it,” I choked out, more tears falling. “Stop. Why are you—”
“And when you got him back, you tried to bend him to your will because you knew you could, didn’t you? Because you knew he would do anything for you, even if it meant he suffered.”
“No,” I shouted tearfully. “That’s not true. You know that’s not true. You’re lying.”
“Whether you meant to or not, you hurt him.”
I was shaking, painful sobs tearing from my throat. Covering my face with my hands, I wept as every terrible thing I had done teemed in my brain like a swarm of angry insects, forcing me to remember all of them.
My knees buckled and hit the earth. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I didn’t mean to—”
“And yet here you are, hurting him yet again. Do you think he would be better off without you, Acherone?”
The question made me choke on a breath. “I-I don’t kn-know.”
Maybe he would.
“Do you think, after hearing all these things, that you are still worthy of living?”
My blood ran cold. I stared blankly at the ground and flinched when Lonan let out a heartbroken roar in the distance.
Sniffing wetly, I whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Then let us keep going.”
My head shot up to gaze at her pleadingly through tear-blurred eyes. “N-no, wait—”
“For a while, you were very close to becoming just like the Brid, weren’t you?” Gadleg hissed. “If only she had been forced to face my judgement like you are.”
My hectic breaths began to slow just a little as I stared at her, blinking hard to clear my vision. Still unsteady, I got to my feet and locked my trembling knees.
“Is that why you’re doing this?” My voice shook. “Is that why you asked for this? Because you thought I’d become like her and you’d get to punish me for it?”
“I have no desire to punish you, Acherone. I am merely playing my part in the bargain we struck.”
I swiped my streaming eyes. “Then why are you only making me remember the bad things I’ve done? You said you’d judge me on everything, not just the bad things. So… so judge me on the good things too.”
There was a pause before Gadleg huffed, hot air steaming from her nostrils. “I was getting there, Seelie King.”
“Oh.” I flushed, hastily scrubbing my nose with my sleeve. “S-sorry.”
