“She won’t touch you.”
“And what about the Lakelanders?” I snap my head back up. Tears of anger spring to my eyes, born of frustration, not fear. “When they rip apart your already-splintering kingdom? What happens when they win this endless war and burn your world to embers?” I scoff to myself, heaving a shuddering breath. The tears fall freely now. They must. I have to sell this with every inch of myself. “I guess then we’ll end up in the Bowl of Bones together, executed side by side.”
By the way he pales, the little color he has draining from his face, I know he’s thought the same thing. It plagues him endlessly, a bleeding wound. So I twist the knife.
“You’re on the edge of civil war. Even I know that. What’s the point in pretending there’s a scenario where I make it out of this alive? Either Evangeline kills me or the war does.”
“I told you already, I won’t let that happen.”
The snarl I throw his way doesn’t need to be faked. “In what life can I trust anything out of your mouth ever again?”
When he stands, the cold fear pooling in my stomach isn’t fake either. As he rounds the table, crossing to me in lean, elegant strides, I lock every muscle, tensing up so I don’t shake. But I quiver anyway. I brace myself for a blow as he takes my face in disturbingly soft hands, both thumbs tight under my jaw, inches away from digging into my jugular.
His kiss burns worse than his brand.
The sensation of his lips on mine is the worst kind of violation. But for him, for what I need, I keep my hands fisted in my lap. My nails dig into my flesh instead of his. He needs to believe as his brother believed. He needs to choose me, the way I tried to make Cal choose me before. Still, I can’t find it in me to open my mouth, and my jaw remains locked shut.
He breaks the kiss first, and I hope he can’t feel my skin crawl beneath his fingers. Instead, his eyes search mine, looking for the lie I keep well hidden.
“I lost every other person I ever loved.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Somehow, he trembles worse than I do. He steps back, letting me go, and his fingers scratch at one another. I’m shocked because I recognize the action. I do it too. When the pain in my head is so horrible I need another kind to draw me away. He stops when he notices me staring, clasping both hands to his sides as tightly as he can.
“She broke a lot of my habits,” he admits. “Never broke that one. Some things always come back.”
“She.” Elara. I see her handiwork right in front of me. The boy she shaped into a king through a torture she called love.
He sits back down, slowly. I keep staring, knowing it unsettles him. I put him off balance, and still I don’t understand exactly why.
Every other person I ever loved.
I don’t know why I’m included in that statement. But I know it’s the reason I’m still breathing. Careful, I edge the conversation back to Cal.
“Your brother is alive.”
“Unfortunately so.”
“And you don’t love him?”
He doesn’t bother to look up, but his eyes waver on the next report, fixed on a single spot. Not because he’s surprised, or even sad. He looks more confused than anything, a little boy trying to solve a puzzle with too many missing pieces. “No,” he says finally, lying.
“I don’t believe you,” I tell him. I even shake my head.
Because I remember them as they were. Brothers, friends, raised together against the rest of the world. Even Maven can’t shut himself off from something like that. Even Elara can’t break that kind of bond. No matter how many times Maven tried to kill Cal, he can’t deny what they were once.
“Believe what you want, Mare,” he replies. As before, he puts on an air of disinterest, violently trying to convince me this means nothing to him. “I know for a fact that I don’t love my brother.”
“Don’t lie. I have siblings too. It’s a complicated thing, especially between me and my sister. She’s always been more talented, better at everything, kinder, smarter. Everyone prefers her to me.” I mumble my old fears, spinning them into a web for Maven. “Take it from a person who knows. Losing one of them—losing a brother . . .” My breath hitches, and my mind flies. Keep going. Use the pain. “It hurts like nothing else.”
“Shade. Right?”
“Keep his name out of your mouth,” I snap, forgetting for a moment what I’m trying to do. The wound is too fresh, too raw. He takes it in stride.
“My mother said you used to dream about him,” he says. I flinch at the memory, and the thought of her inside my brain. I can still feel her, clawing at the walls of my skull. “But I suppose those weren’t dreams at all. It was really him.”
“Did she do that with everyone?” I reply. “Was nothing safe from her? Even your dreams?”
He doesn’t respond. I push harder.
“Did you ever dream of me?”
Again I cut him without realizing it. He drops his gaze, looking down to the empty plate in front of him. He raises a hand to grab at his water glass, but thinks better of it. His fingers tremble for a second before he shoves them away, out of sight.
“I wouldn’t know,” he finally says. “I don’t dream.”
I scoff. “That’s impossible. Even for a person like you.”
Something dark, something sad, twitches across his face. His jaw tightens and his throat bobs, trying to swallow words he shouldn’t speak. They burst from him anyway. His hands reappear, tapping weakly on the table.
“I used to have nightmares. She took that part away when I was a boy. Like Samson said, my mother was a surgeon with minds. She cut out whatever didn’t suit.”
In recent weeks, a ferocious, fiery anger has replaced the cold hollowness I used to feel. But as Maven speaks, the ice returns. It bleeds through me, a poison, an infection. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. His excuses and explanations are nothing to me. He is a monster still, a monster always. And yet I can’t stop myself from listening. Because I could be a monster too. If given the wrong chance. If someone broke me, like he is broken.
“My brother. My father. I know I loved them once. I remember it.” His hands clench around a butter knife, and he glares at the dull edge. I wonder if he wants to use it on himself or his dead mother. “But I don’t feel it. That love isn’t there anymore. For any of them. For most things.”
“Then why keep me here? If you don’t feel anything. Why not just kill me and be done with this?”
“She has a hard time erasing . . . certain kinds of feeling,” he admits, meeting my eye. “She tried to do it with Father, to make him forget his love for Coriane. It only made things worse. Besides,” he mumbles, “she always said it was better to be heartbroken. The pain makes you stronger. Love makes you weak. And she’s right. I learned that before I even knew you.”
Another name lingers in the air, unspoken.
“Thomas.”
A boy at the war front. Another Red lost to a useless war. My first real friend, Maven told me once. I realize now the spaces between those words. The things unsaid. He loved that boy as he claims to love me.
“Thomas,” Maven echoes. His grip on the knife tightens. “I felt . . .” Then his brow furrows, deep creases forming between his eyes. He puts his other hand to his temple, massaging an ache I can’t understand. “She wasn’t there. She never met him. She didn’t know. He wasn’t even a soldier. It was an accident.”
“You said you tried to save him. That your guards stopped you.”
“An explosion at headquarters. The reports said it was Lakelander infiltration.” Somewhere, a clock ticks as the minutes slide by. His silence stretches as he decides what to say, how far to let the mask slip. But it’s already gone. He’s bare as he can only be with me. “We were alone. I lost control.”
I see it in my mind’s eye, filling in what he can’t will himself to tell me. An ammunitions depot maybe. Or even a gas line. Both need only flame to kill.
“I didn’t burn. He did.”