Now all I had to do was let him.
I scooted closer, smiling. The last thought I had before falling asleep was that maybe being married felt different, after all.
34.
Kai woke me at sunrise.
The rain had subsided to a murmur. We dressed in the half-light from the window, but something about the dawn looked different. Wrong.
When we emerged from the shack, I realized why.
The rot had gone, its purple glow vanquished by the rain, which still fell in spears from a steel-gray sky.
The swamp glistened, olive and navy and silver. No purple to speak of. The rain soaked us in moments and stuck Kai’s hair to his forehead, but being drenched felt right, somehow. Like a rite of passage that cleansed us, too.
“Ready?” he said.
A knot tightened in my throat. Olivian. He was definitely going to kill me.
But there was no help for it, so I took Kai’s hand and nodded, pointing my feet toward home.
The seneschal met us in the drive.
His face crumpled when Kai and I emerged from the marsh, but I could tell by the defeated set of his shoulders that he already knew. Of course he did. Nothing else could have cured the rot overnight except the one thing he’d feared above all else.
I raised my chin and headed for him, leaving Kai behind. By the time I reached Olivian, he was on his knees in the gravel, his throat convulsing. I couldn’t tell if he was crying. Rain coursed down his cheeks, soaking his beard, plastering his hair to his head.
“You promised,” he gasped. A dark abyss lay beneath the accusation. “Youpromisedme.”
“I know.” I got on my knees, too, ignoring the bite of gravel. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked wild, his face a tangled mess of grief.
I reached for his hand, then thought better of it. “But she asked me, Olivian. Shewantedto go. And I couldn’t keep her here anymore. I just...couldn’t. It wasn’t right. I loved her too much to make her stay.”
A sob tore from his chest. “I should kill you.”
I waited, but he didn’t move, and I could tell he didn’t really mean it. He just needed to vent his anguish, by any means necessary.
“I broughtsomethingback, though,” I said. “For you.”
He just sat there. The light had left his eyes.
I glanced back at Kai, who nodded his encouragement. I eased the dagger from its sheath and offered Olivian the hilt. Rain collected in the channel that ran down the blade.
The seneschal stared, seemingly devoid of even the will to take the knife and bury it in my chest.
Not that I would’ve let him. “Hold it,” I said. “And you can talk to her. Inside your mind.”
A glimmer stirred in his life-starved eyes. He palmed the dagger with one massive hand.
His gaze unfocused. Then his body jolted and his eyes slammed shut and he was weeping, truly weeping—great, wrenching sobs that wracked his frame. He curled forward until his forehead hit the ground.
“My sweet girl,” he babbled, between heaves. “My baby. My precious daughter.”
I knelt there, a wealth of feeling stoppering my breath. I had never seen anyone fall apart so spectacularly, and I couldn’t decide what to do. Eventually, I settled for an awkward pat of his back.
“Leave me,” he growled. “Leave me with her.”
