Maven tips his head, watching me think as a cat watches a mouse. He’s enjoying this. It makes my skin crawl.
Why give me this? Why even let me ask? Another question almost wasted. Because I know the answer to this too. Maven is not who I thought he was, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know parts of him. I can guess what this is, as much as I want to be wrong. It’s his version of an explanation. A way to make me understand what he’s done and why he continues to do it. He knows what question I will eventually summon the courage to ask. He is a king, but a boy too, alone in a world of his own making.
“How much of it was her?”
He doesn’t flinch. He knows me too well to be surprised. A more foolish girl would dare to hope—would believe him a puppet to an evil woman, now abandoned, now adrift. Continuing on a course he has no idea how to change. Luckily, I’m not that stupid.
“I was slow to walk, you know.” He isn’t looking at me anymore, but at the blue flag above us. Adorned in white pearls and cloudy gems, a rich thing doomed to collect dust in Elara’s memory. “The doctors, even Father, they told Mother I would be fine in my own time. It would happen one day. But ‘one day’ wasn’t fast enough for her. She couldn’t be the queen with the crippled, slow son. Not after Coriane gave the kingdom a prince like Cal, always smiling and talking and laughing and perfect. She had my nurse discarded, blamed her for my shortcomings, and took it upon herself to make me stand. I don’t remember it, but she told me the story so many times. She thought it showed how much she loved me.”
Dread pools in my stomach, though I don’t understand why. Something warns me to get up, to walk from this room and into the waiting arms of my guards. Another lie, another lie, I tell myself. Artfully woven, as only he can do. Maven cannot look at me. I taste shame on the air.
His perfect eyes made of ice gloss over, but I’ve long hardened myself to his tears. The first gets stuck in his dark lashes, a wobbling drop of crystal.
“I was a baby, and she hammered her way into my head. She made my body stand, and walk, and fall. She did it every day, until I cried when she entered a room. Until I learned to do it myself. Out of fear. But that would not do either. A baby crying whenever his mother held him?” He shakes his head. “Eventually she took the fear away too.” His eyes darken. “Like so many other things.
“You ask how much of it was me,” he whispers. “Some. Enough.”
But not all.
I can’t stand this any longer. With unbalanced motions, tipped by the weight of my manacles and the sick clenching of my heart, I clamber from the chair.
“You can’t still blame this on her, Maven,” I hiss at him, stepping back. “Don’t lie to me and say you’re doing this because of a dead woman.”
As fast as his tears came, they disappear. Wiped away, as if they never existed. The crack in his mask seals shut. Good. I have no desire to see the boy beneath.
“I’m not,” he says slowly, sharply. “She is gone now. My choices are my own. Of that I am infinitely sure.”
The throne. His seat in the council chamber. Plain things compared to the diamondglass artistry or velvet his father used to sit. Hewn of blocked stone, simple, without gems or precious metal. And now I understand why. “Silent Stone. You make all your decisions sitting there.”
“Wouldn’t you? With House Merandus leering so close?” He leans back, propping his chin on one hand. “I’ve had enough of the whispers they call guidance. Enough to last a lifetime.”
“Good,” I spit at him. “Now you have no one else to blame for your evil.”
One side of his mouth lifts in a weak, patronizing smile. “You’d think that.”
I fight the urge to seize whatever I can and bash his head in with it, erasing his smile from the face of the earth. “If only I could kill you and be done with this.”
“How you wound me.” He clucks his tongue, amused. “And then what? Run back to your Scarlet Guard? To my brother? Samson saw him many times in your thoughts. Dreams. Memories.”
“Still fixated on Cal, even now, when you’ve won?” It’s an easy card to play. His grins annoy me, but my smirk vexes him just as much. We know how to needle each other. “Strange, then, that you’re trying so hard to be like him.”
It’s Maven’s turn to stand, his hands landing hard on the desk as he rises up to meet my eye. A corner of his mouth twitches, pulling his face into a bitter sneer. “I’m doing what my brother never could. Cal follows orders, but he can’t make choices. You know that as well as I do.” His eyes flicker, finding an empty spot on the wall. Looking for Cal’s face. “No matter how wonderful you might think he is, so gallant, brave, and perfect. He would make a worse king than I ever could.”
I almost agree. I’ve spent too many months watching Cal walk the line between Scarlet Guard and Silver prince, refusing to kill but refusing to stop us, never leaning to one side or the other. Even though he’s seen horror and injustice, he still won’t take a stand. But he is not Maven. He is not one inch the evil that Maven is.
“I’ve only heard one person describe him as perfect. You,” I tell him calmly. It only maddens him further. “I think you may have a bit of an obsession where Cal is concerned. Are you going to blame that on your mother too?”
It was meant to be a joke, but to Maven it is anything but. His gaze wavers, only for an instant. A shocking one. In spite of myself, I feel my eyes widen and my heart drop in my chest. He doesn’t know. He truly doesn’t know what parts of his mind are his own and what parts were made by her.
“Maven,” I can’t help but whisper, terrified by what I may have stumbled upon.
He draws one hand through dark hair, pulling at the strands until they stand on end. An odd silence stretches, one that exposes us both. I feel as though I have wandered somewhere I should not be, trespassed into a place I really don’t want to go.