“What?”
Hadrian stood. He needed to move. There wasn’t much space but he still paced back and forth between the wall and the door. Three steps each way. “So when are you going to do it? As soon as I leave? Tonight? How about a nice morning suicide? Huh, Royce? You could be poetic and time it with the rising of the sun, or just the drama of midnight, how would that be?”
Royce scowled.
“How are you gonna do it? Your wrists? Throat? Gonna challenge the guard to fight when he brings dinner? Call him names? Or are you gonna make an even bigger splash? Head for Modina’s room and threaten the empress’s life again. You’ll find some young idiot, a big one, someone with an ego. You’ll draw a blade, something little, something not too scary. He’ll draw his sword. You’ll pretend to attack, but he won’t know you’re faking.”
“Don’t be this way.”
“This way?” Hadrian stopped and whirled on him. He had to take a breath to calm down. “How do you expect me to be? You think I should be—what? Happy, maybe? Did you think I’d just be okay with this? I thought you were stronger. If anyone could survive—”
“That’s just it—I don’t want to! I’ve always survived. Life is like a bully that gets laughs by seeing how much humiliation you’ll put up with. It threatens to kill you if you don’t eat mud. It takes everything you care about—not because it wants what you have, or needs it. It does it just to see if you’ll take it. I let it push me around ever since I was a kid. I did everything it demanded just to survive. But as I’ve gotten older, I realize there are limits. You showed me that. There’s only so far I can go, only so much I can put up with. I’m not going to take it anymore. I won’t eat mud just to survive.”
“So it’s my fault?” Hadrian slumped down on the mattress once more. He sat there running his hand through his hair for a moment, then said, “Just so you know, you’re not the only one who misses her. I loved her too.”
Royce looked up.
“Not like that. You know what I mean. The worst part is…” His voice cracked. “It really is my fault, and that’s what I will be left with. Did you think of that? You were right and I was wrong. You said not to take the job from DeWitt, but I talked you into it. ‘Let’s leave Dahlgren; this isn’t our fight,’ you said, but I got you to stay. ‘You can’t win against Merrick,’ you said, so you went to protect me. You told me Degan Gaunt would be an ass, and you were right about that too. You didn’t do what you knew was right because of me. I pulled you along while trying to redeem myself to the memory of a dead father. Gwen is gone because of me. I destroyed what little good there was in your life trying to accomplish something that in the end means nothing.
“I’m not the hero who saves the kingdom and wins the girl. Life isn’t like that.” Hadrian laughed bitterly. “You finally taught me that one, pal. Yep. Life isn’t a fairy tale. Heroes don’t ride white horses, and the good don’t always win. I just—I guess I just wanted it to be that way. I didn’t think there was any harm in believing it. I never knew it would be you and Gwen that would pay.”
“It’s not your fault,” Royce told him.
“You tell me that a few million more times and I might actually start believing it. Only that’s not going to happen, now is it? You’re not going to be around to remind me, are you? You’re going to give up. You’re going to walk out on me and that will be my fault too. Damn it, Royce! You have a choice. I know it doesn’t seem like it, and I know I’m a fool that believes in a fantasy world where good things can happen to good people, but I do know this. You can either head into darkness and despair or into virtue and light. It’s up to you.”
Royce jerked his head up and looked at Hadrian, a shocked expression on his face. Shock turned quickly to suspicion.
“What?” Hadrian asked, concerned.
“How are you doing that?” Royce demanded, and for the first time since Hadrian had entered the cell, he saw the old Royce—cold, dark, and angry.
“How am I doing what?”
“That’s the second time you’ve quoted Gwen, once on the bridge and now—this. She said that same thing to me once, those exact words.”
“Huh?”
“She read my palm and told me there was a fork—a point of decision. I had to choose to head into darkness and despair or into virtue and light. She told me this would be precipitated by a traumatic event—the death of the one I loved the most.”
“Gwen?”
He nodded. “But you weren’t there. You couldn’t have heard her say that. We were alone in her office at the House. It was a year ago. I only remember because it was the night Arista came to The Rose and Thorn, and you were getting drunk and ranting about being a parasite. So how did you know?”
Hadrian shrugged. “I didn’t, but…” He felt a chill run up his spine. “What if she did? What if I’m not quoting her—what if she was quoting me?”
“What?”
“Gwen was a seer,” Hadrian said. “What if she saw your future, bits and pieces like Fan Irlanu did in that Tenkin village?” Now he was staring at the wall, his eyes wandering aimlessly as he thought. “She could have seen us on the bridge, and here in this cell. She knew what I would say, and she also knew you wouldn’t listen to me. She must have known you wouldn’t listen to me at the bridge either. That’s why she said those things.” He was speaking quickly now, seeing it all before him. “She knew you would ignore me, but you can’t ignore her. Royce, Gwen doesn’t want you to die. She agrees with me. I may have been wrong in the past, but not this time. This time I’m right, and I know I’m right because Gwen saw the future and she’s backing me up.” He sat against the wall, folding his hands behind his head in victory. “You can’t kill yourself,” he said jubilantly, as if he had just won some unspoken bet. “You can’t do it without betraying her wishes!”
Royce looked confused. “But if she knew, why didn’t she stop it? Why did she let me go with you? Why didn’t she tell me?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? She wanted us to go, and either she couldn’t avoid her death, or—”
“Or what? She wanted to die?” he said sarcastically.
“No, I was going to say, she knew she had to die.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—something else she saw, maybe, something that hasn’t happened yet. Something so important it was worth dying on the bridge for, but whatever it is, it doesn’t include you killing yourself. She made that pretty clear, I think.”
Royce threw his head back against the stone wall hard enough to make an audible thud and clenched his eyes shut. “Damn it.”