“I won’t. He hasn’t asked, anyway.”
“You could ask him. I did. Don’t recommend it.”
“I already tried that once,” I admitted. In King Humayun’s antechamber. “In Trissau.”
“Unbelievable that he didn’t jump at the chance,” Raina said. “Idiot.”
“Lorcan wanted to be the one to ask me.” With a flash of panic, I remembered telling him he could ask me whenever he wanted and the answer would always be yes. Obviously, that’s changed. “It was only supposed to be a formality. It was before I knew about… about…”
I can’t even say the words.His cheating.
Raina made a disgusted sound. “Was he always a control freak?”
“Yes. Didn’t you notice?”
“I guess I brushed it off when I fancied myself in love with him. Besides, his possessiveness was all directed at you, not me.” She pretended to retch.
“Hey, now. That’s my temporary, sham fiancé you’re fake-vomiting about.”
“Oh, no.” Raina groaned. “More romance tropes.”
“What?”
“I was certain you were smart enough not to let Lorcan back into your life.”
No wonder I’m so confused about what to do and how to feel: Saskaya thinks I should marry him. Raina says I’d be a fool to trust him again.
When I asked him what he wanted from life, he said:Save the country. Rescue the princess. Marry her, and live happily ever after.
I laughed and said I didn’t need saving. I’m not sure that was ever strictly true, though. My life has been in jeopardy since the day I was born and will be until the day I die—hopefully, not from murderous Skía, but one way or another, it’s coming. My death is as inevitable as anyone’s. The question is how I use the time I have left to me. I’ve always known it might not be very much.
It was that fact that drove me into the night in Beijing. The need to experience a taste of freedom. Something. Even if no one else understood why or how badly I wanted it.
And the one night we were together physically, in River Bend, he said,you have no idea how sexy it is to have you, Princess, panting and begging me to fuck you. None.
I think he meant it as a compliment—he was turned on by it, despite my starvation—but remembering it now feels like the bright sun going behind a shadow. Lowering to know that all he ever wanted was the princess. Though he as good as told me, had I but listened.
If I needed any more evidence, Arya gave it to me earlier today.I’m going to marry Princess Zosia.A child’s oath. I was always on a pedestal, an object to acquire on his personal quest. Perhaps at one point he came to appreciate me, Zosia, as a person, but it wasn’t enough to make him come for me when I needed him most.
He didn’t put me first, any more than anyone else ever has, and nothing about his behavior since our reunion indicates he ever will.
I watched Lorcan turn the crank of the barrel with our clothing inside. I don’t quite understand how both Raina and Saskaya are both right despite giving me opposite advice. The one opinion I don’t trust is my own. If I can’t even trust my own judgment where my own guard is concerned, how can I lead an entire country?
Maybe I can’t. Everything I’ve tried since getting out of the castle has gone wrong. I admit I’m hiding here in this mountainside village. Shirking responsibility. I resolved to be more diligent about submitting the applications for international aid Saskaya sent me to fill out. Having failed to bring in money through marriage, begging for money is the least I can do.
Just like my father did.
“Raina, is it possible he’s lying about his memories?” I asked, pushing aside my rumination about all the things I’ve done wrong.
“In what way?”
“I can never tell when he’s not telling me the entire truth, when he genuinely doesn’t remember, or when he’s lying outright.”
Raina sighed. “He’s never been an outright liar. He’s always had a…how to phrase it?”
“A relationship of convenience with the truth?”
My friend laughed. “That’s a great way to put it, Zosia. Yeah, he’s changed a lot. I didn’t really want to see it. He was hurting, and acting out from a place of pain, not that it excuses anything he did. I wasn’t there when he woke up, but Sas and I were in touch regularly. I almost didn’t believe how screwed up he was until I saw him again around Midwinter.”
