I read it three times. Was this possible? The king signing anythingHumbly? And without any titles?
But more importantly, did he mean it?
I tapped on the door.
He opened it immediately and locked eyes with me. He was fully dressed, with a coat loose over the sword and dagger belted around his fine trousers. His white shirt was mostly buttoned, but the top few seemed to have been ripped apart. The gaze that normally radiated power looked haunted and vulnerable. He braced his hands against the sides of the doorframe and breathed heavily, as if standing in my presence was some kind of strenuous workout.
I wanted to remind him of Motab’s murder, to make him feel some fraction of the pain that had pressed against my chest for days, to see if he really felt the remorse he described in his letter, to twist that remorse until he suffered…
And it would be so easy. He looked broken. I could not reconcile his drawn face, disheveled hair, and trembling posture with the fire-wielding, arrogant monster I knew him as.
I waved the letter at him. “What is this?”
He straightened and brought his anxious breathing under control. “Did you read it?”
“I did.” Blood pounded in my head, clouding my thoughts. I closed my eyes, took two breaths, and then met his gaze again. “But the words on this parchment are so outside of my experiences with you that I cannot believe you actually wrote them.”
“I wrote them,” he said softly.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “What did you write?”
He spread his hands to the door frame again and gripped it. His words came out hoarse and ragged. “I wrote that I am a monster. I should not have tricked your mother—I should have been honest and questioned what I did not know. In killing her, even unintentionally, I have wronged you in a way that I cannot correct. But I will submit to any punishment you believe is appropriate.”
My head pounded harder. He could not really meanany punishment. “What limitations? What qualifications?”
“None,” he breathed. He dragged in a long, deep breath and met my eyes. “Truly.”
The hammering in my head spread. It pounded through my blood and heated my skin. I could hardly breathe. He couldn’t really mean that… could he?
“What if,” I whispered, “I want you dead, like my mother?”
He pulled a dagger off the belt on his hip andextended the hilt toward me. “Then I would offer you my knife.”
I stretched a trembling hand out to take it. Five sparkling rubies decorated the crossguard and another capped the elaborate pommel. He stepped closer and wrapped his hand over mine, sealing it on the hilt. The heat from his skin flooded mine, and his voice dropped so low that it rumbled like the drekkan’s. “Or, knowing your aversion to violence, I would also offer to take a poison that will stop my heart, or…” His voice caught. “Or I would submit myself to any method of death you choose.”
“And then what?” I could not speak over a whisper, not with him inches away and our hands wrapped around a dagger hilt. The strength in his hands yelled at me not to trust this humility. It could not be real. “What,” I asked, “would your kingdom do without its king?”
He bowed his head. “A cursed king that has trapped his people in the capital he tried to protect?” He shook his head. “I do not know much about fae curses, but I hope that my death will open the barrier, free my people, and allow my cousin to come in and rule. But if not, I have left detailed instructions on my desk for my aunt to rule here and for theD’Aeran twins’ status to be elevated so they have enough authority to keep you safe.”
Tears pressed at the corners of my eyes, and I blinked them back furiously. He’d made arrangements formeto be safe in the event that I chose to have him killed. In this moment, he felt more real than any other time I’d seen him. Like a man, without magic, broken by choices he wished he’d made differently. His words tore into my soul as hard as any truth ever had. It did not matter what emotion I had this week—my body responded by wanting to cry. “I…”
I did not know what to say. Who offered themselves up for a death sentence? “Why would you do that?”
His hand tightened around mine, and I squeezed the hilt in response. “Because.” His soft, tormented words came slowly. “If our positions were reversed, I would demand your punishment equal your crime. In this case, it would be death. I cannot live a double standard and consider myself just. So I made the appropriate arrangements.”
He really expected me tokillhim. “But you said it was an accident? That you did not trick her with the intent to hurt her.”
“But the deceit was not an honorable action. And its consequences were devastating.”
I pressed my thumb against a gem on the hilt until the pressure hurt. The small pain triggered a cascading identification of pain: I hurt because I missed my mother. I hurt because anger was eating me, from the inside out. And now I hurt because my reality was shifting in a way I did not expect—a way that pounded in my head and shook my voice.
My reality an hour ago was overshadowed and controlled by an evil king who had murdered my mother. Now… the world slanted.
Now, the evil king was a broken man who had made horrible mistakes, and I—I—controlled his fate.
And he expected me to kill him.
But he hadn’t meant to kill my mother.
