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“Kill who?”
“The Carlin.” I let out a harsh bark of laughter, driving my sword into the crude wooden target. “I don’t even fucking want to be king, but what is the alternative? Rotting here for the rest of my life or hiding in the forest like a scared little mouse.”
“You think you will be king when she dies?”
“I know I will.” Bitterness coloured my tone. I stabbed at the target again. “It’s done. My fate is already sealed. I have no choice.”
Rage briefly clouded my vision, my teeth flashing sharp and cutting into my gums. I tugged my sword free and lifted it over my head, bringing it down on the target. Over and over, hacking at the crude sack-and-hay likeness of a body, slicing it to shreds.
“I never have a fucking choice.” I couldn’t stop, bringing my sword down again and again. “My mother kept me trapped, and now Ash is trying to…” I trailed off with a sound of frustration. “I am not just a fucking… pet to be kept. I’m not just a tool to use or a blade to wield or a pampered consort who is expected to lounge around and wait for my king to have time for me. But I never have a fucking choice.”
“You do,” Sanya said matter-of-factly.
I went still at the sound of her voice, breathing hard as I stared at the ruined target in front of me, now nothing more than a mess of shredded sack cloth and splintered wood with a sea of hay drifting to the ground beneath it.
I couldn’t speak, my throat closing up with shame as I realised what I had said. I didn’t think Ash was as bad as my mother—of course I didn’t. I didn’t think he was keeping me here for his own gain. I understood his reasons. I understood his worry.
But that didn’t stop the resentment from festering.
“You have a choice,” Sanya reiterated. “You don’t have to stay here. You can leave.”
I flinched. “I don’t want to leave Ash.”
“If you are to be king someday”—she kept her voice low—“you will have to, won’t you? You can still be together. Somehow. But the longer you stay here, Prince Lonan, feeling like this… the less you will want to stay for him.”
“No.” I shook my head, clamping my jaw shut when my chin trembled. “I love him. That will never change.”
“My mother once told me that love is not always pleasant. That it doesn’t always make you happy. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it takes more than it gives.” Sanya chuckled. “Strange wisdom to impart, I know, but I’m glad she did.”
“Why?” I mumbled, not wanting to acknowledge the twisting ache in my gut. Not wanting to think about how true her words rang.
In fact, I was quite sure that I had only ever experienced the painful kind of love. I had loved my mother once, when I was a little boy, until she had whipped and burned every last shred of that love out of me. I had hoped for love from my brothers, but learned at an even younger age that I would never receive it.
Ash’s love felt pure. Innocent. So beautiful that when I was first getting to experience what it felt like to bask in it, I would have destroyed the entire world to keep hold of it. But I was the one who had tainted that love with my deception. With all the secrets I had been hiding. All the things I should have tried harder to stop from happening to him.
Perhaps love and pain were too intrinsically linked for me to ever experience them separately. Perhaps the Higher Spirits had deemed me unworthy of having one without the other.
“Why am I glad?” Sanya clarified. “Because it has helped stop me from losing myself entirely for another person. I’ve been in love, but I didn’t let it strip away who I was. I didn’t let it take more than it gave. And anyone worthy of your love wouldn’t want it to. They would want to give just as much back. They would want you to stay your own person, because that’s the person they fell in love with.”
I had no idea what to say to that, mainly because I’d never felt like I really knew who I was anyway. I’d been the runt of the family, the outcast with a father I’d never met who was despised by the rest of them. I’d been my mother’s blade. I had briefly been the Lonan Ash thought I was, a false Lonan who was hiding too many secrets, before that all shattered into pieces.
And now I was the black spot marring seelie land. A king with no crown. A dark spectre haunting the seelie king’s palace.
I didn’t want to be king, but at least it would give me purpose. At least I wouldn’t just be wasting away. At least I’d be back on unseelie land.
“My love is not a worthy thing,” I muttered, sheathing my sword and shoving my damp hair back from my face. “It’s damaged. And difficult. I am grateful every day that I have Ash’s love, but he has no reason to be grateful for mine.”
“Did he say that to you?” Sanya spoke between clenched teeth, striding closer. “Did he tell you that you should be grateful?”
“No.” I shook my head, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Never. But it’s still true.”
Sanya made a frustrated sound in her throat. “It is not fucking true. This may get me sent to the dungeon for treason if you repeat this to him, but I have to say it. He is not better than you, Prince Lonan, just because he is king or because his childhood was more pleasant than yours.”
“He has never said that,” I shot back defensively.
“Good.” Her voice was hard. “But you obviously still think it. Has he ever told you how grateful he is for your love? Does he do anything to reassure you?”
“If I shouldn’t have to be grateful for it, why should he?” I asked stiffly. “Why are the rules different for him? He tells me constantly that he loves me. He is not the one who struggles to voice his affection in our relationship, Sanya.”
