His eyes shot to mine, as he seemed to hold his very breath.
“I will speak with Krew about where you can go. What you can do.”
“Anything,” Easton pleaded. “I will do anything. Please let me help you all. I may have let you all down, but I am still disloyal.” I noted his word choice. He had used the term disloyal but nothing about The Six. Krew must have trusted the guards standing outside the door only so far.
He added, “I am still motivated to try to right my wrongs. I don’t think that guilt will ever leave me.”
“You can never fully right the wrong that took my father,” I snapped. “He is gone and can never come back.”
Easton closed his eyes. “You are right, Your Grace. But I can help you take down the king. I can help the disloyal in the different townships. I know the princes don’t trust me and likely won’t again but let me try to atone for this somehow.” He paused. “I know that may not be possible and either way I will live with the hurt I have caused, but please let me do something.”
“Even if that is not something in Kavan Keep?” I asked.
He nodded. “Even if. I will work with the tensions in Nerede. Or work with the disloyal in Rallis. Whatever you’d like, Your Grace.”
He couldn’t go to Nerede. Not as long as my mother was there. I would never allow her to cross paths with him. She would never even know what he looked like. I sighed. “I will speak with Krew. That is all I can promise.” I paused. “This watered-down forgiveness is the only form I can offer right now. Though I hate that my father is gone, I do not hateyouany longer. I do understand the impossible circumstances. And no matter how hard I try, I also cannot forget what happened either. I just don’t wish for you to rot away in here. I refuse to start my reign as a princess with more cruelty.”
I turned to leave, giving Owen a wince of a smile.
“Jor—Your Grace?” Easton asked from behind me.
I turned to look back at him.
“Thank you.”
I gave him a tight smile. “Don’t thank me yet.”
He bowed his head. “No matter if you get me out of here or not, thank you for being the type of person who shows mercy. Even when it is not deserved.”
“If you weren’t remorseful, you’d already be dead,” I admitted. “It’s almost harder that you are. It makes the question of what to do with you more difficult.”
He shook his head. “I still breathe because of you.”
My eyes went back to the fire and how close the bed was moved to it. I couldn’t get over how cold it was in this part of the castle. But I also shouldn’t care that my father’s murderer was cold. “Is it always this cold in here?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
My eyes went to Owen as I spun back to leave. “Remind me to never end up in the mountain.”
Owen’s voice was thick with emotion as he gestured for me to go first, “You willnevergo near those cells, Jorah.”
Easton added from behind us as I stepped out of the room, “Long may she reign.” He’d said it at a whisper so soft I wasn’t sure we were meant to hear it.
Outside of Easton’s room, I felt like my lungs were working easier than they had in weeks. Rather than continue to avoid it and shove it aside, I needed to work through my grief with my father and come to terms with Easton’s role in it. So that I could let go of it. While most days I didn’t think of Easton, I had every day since having killed that guard.
I could hate what happened when my father died while still giving his murderer a modicum of credit in feeling remorse for what happened.
I could hate the circumstances and not the person. Because at the moment, I had the capacity to violently hate only one person. I was saving and storing it all up for him. The king.
I immediately told Krew down the bond we were on the way back up to his wing, feeling that he was already there. I had skipped lunch to get seeing Easton over with. So I asked Owen to ring for lunch for me as I headed in to find Krew.
He was seated at his usual place around the oval table, a whiskey in front of him.
“Krew?” I asked softly.
He looked up at me, and I saw it looked like he had been crying or close to it.
“What’s wrong?”
