Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
And a deep confusion that I’ve managed to bring him here, at all. I had no wishes left.
I open the door and we enter my royal bedchamber. I study his expression as he takes it in, recognizes where he stands.
“You’ve been here before,” I say. It is not a question. He knows what I’ve learned.
“I have.” He looks past me, through me, stiff and grim.
“You had a chance to tell me everything. When we spoke about what I found in the diary. You had the opportunity then to tell me the truth, and you didn’t.” I clasp my hands together to stop them shaking.
“That is true.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I want the answer to this question more than I want my faery nature.
“Tell me!” I command him.
“You had the diary,” he says with a disinterested shrug. “I assumed you’d be smart enough to figure it out yourself.”
“I did figure it out myself,” I snap. “I’m asking why I had to learn it from a dead queen and not from you.”
He doesn’t even attempt a lie. “Because I had no intention of telling you.”
“Why?” I demand.
“Because whether or not you knew had no bearing on how the situation benefited me.” He says it with maddening neutrality, as if it makes no difference that he hid such important information from me.
My nails dig into my fingers as I clutch my hands harder. “It didn’t benefit you to tell me of my true parentage.”
“If anything, you knowing could have ruined the entire enterprise.” He speaks as though his betrayal is a simple matter, not another rift opening between us. “If you knew your true parentage, you might have told someone. Cassan, Kathras. Arcus, though I don’t think you’re that foolish. If you did not know, however, you couldn’t even mistakenly tell.”
“So, what? Not telling me was... protecting me?” I scoff.
“Partially. I was protecting myself, as well.” He paces to one of the walls, rubs a smudge on one of the mirrors with his sleeve. “I did consider telling you, at the beginning. I thought perhaps I could entice you to help me if you knew that Arcus had killed Parphia. But you were already so filled with rage and violence that I didn’t need to. You had your own revenge planned. Telling you the truth might have changed the way you felt about your mother, and you might not have been so eager to accept my proposal.”
How is it possible that I’ve fallen in love with such a monster? How foolish of me.
“You would have let me live my entire life here, never knowing?” My voice trembles.
“I think so, yes.” He considers. “If I thought you wouldn’t remove my head, I might have told you.”
“Don’t be so sure that I won’t, now!”
He laughs at me. At the soon-to-be queen who could very much order his head removed. “You won’t.”
“Why?” I glare at him as he wanders about the room. “Why do you believe I’ll have more mercy for you than I had for Arcus.”
Luthian is before me in a flash, towering over me. “Because we both know that you would die in the same instant I did.”
I open my mouth to deny it.
“You love me.” He says it like an accusation. “You let me become more important to you than your revenge, than a crown. You complicated everything.”
“I suppose it’s my weak, human nature,” I spit back at him. “By all means, remove it from me!”
“I will not!” He shouts in my face, and I shrink back from him. The silvery rage in his eyes fades, leaving only remorse behind.
It is in that flare of anger that I see my own pain reflected. I wanted to have my revenge on Thrace because he took my mother away, but when he died… it was as if she died all over again. Luthian has his revenge. Arcus is dead. And now that it’s over…
“The spell is all that remains of Parphia,” I whisper.
He closes his eyes. “Cenere…”
“You didn’t tell me, and you didn’t remove the spell, because once you do, Parphia is gone. Truly gone.” I take a step back and look down at myself. The human body I thought I inhabited. The human feelings I so often cursed myself for having. These are all that remain of a long-dead faery queen.
“No. I didn’t tell you the truth because when you found out... you would be gone.”
I meet his eyes. “That isn’t true. I’ll be a faery, the way I was meant to be before all of this secrecy and treachery and betrayal.”
“But you won’t be the human Cenere that I fell in love with.”
I feel as though I’m sinking, though my feet remain on the floor.
“I have never pretended to be selfless. Or honest.” He chuckles ruefully. “Yes, Cenere. I love you. And the love of a faery is selfish and consuming and possessive. I would never have let you change if I stayed. That’s why I left you.”