“You were afraid enough that you allegedly took a potion to save your life,” Jonas pointed out. “Did you know she planned to kill you?”
Any amusement fell from Ashur’s handsome face. “I didn’t know. Not for sure. And the potion I took . . . it was well before my journey and primarily to protect myself from King Gaius, should he attempt to use my presence in his kingdom against my father. I had no idea that the potion would even work.”
“But it did,” Jonas said. “We need to find this apothecary, or witch, or whomever you used. Resurrection potions for everyone. Magic like that could save a lot of people.”
“Death magic is nothing to be tampered with,” Ashur snapped. “Not for any reason.”
“Yet you did tamper with such dark magic to save your own life.” Cleo was sure that the prince flinched at her accusation, which seemed very unlike him. “Do you feel guilty about that?”
“Of course not.” Still, he wouldn’t meet her gaze directly.
“No, no more lies, Ashur. If you’re trying to give us the impression that we’re all on the same side here, then you need to be forthright with us. There’s more to this potion than you want to say. It’s dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Many potions are. Poison is simply a potion meant to kill.”
Cleo took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling she was on the verge of uncovering a secret. “I’ve found that all magic comes with a price. What price did you pay for the chance to live again?”
“I’ve found that magic’s price is often the opposite of the magic itself. For great power, you will experience moments of great weakness. For pleasure, there will be pain. And for life . . . there will be death.”
“So you killed someone,” Jonas said, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “Or many people. So much for your claims of altruism.”
Ashur moved to the window to look outside, his arms crossed over his chest. “You know nothing about me, Jonas. I have killed when I’ve had to. I haven’t always been a pacifist. The apothecary warned me of the price I’d have to pay, but I didn’t believe it. Amara unwittingly paid the same price when she was resurrected.”
Cleo frowned deeply. “Amara was resurrected?”
“She was,” Ashur said solemnly, then proceeded to tell Cleo and Jonas about what happened when Amara was only a baby, saved from drowning by dark magic and her mother’s ultimate sacrifice.
Cleo found that she needed to take a seat, unexpectedly moved by this story. In Auranos—in Mytica—while women were valued for their ability to be mothers and cooks and nursemaids, they weren’t prevented from doing other things, should they choose to. And a princess was able to be the heir to her father’s or mother’s throne without worrying about being murdered simply for the alleged crime of being a girl. Cleo wasn’t sure whether she admired Amara’s mother for valuing the life of her daughter—a girl—enough to sacrifice her own life or whether she blamed the woman for the fact that her daughter grew up to become a monster.
“Who died for you?” Cleo asked softly.
Shadows slid behind Ashur’s faraway gaze, and he glanced at Jonas briefly before continuing. “I didn’t know for sure, but I knew someone did. That’s what I’ve been doing the last month. Traveling, visiting friends and past lovers. It was someone I spent a single summer with. I had no idea he still cared for me . . . that he’d never stopped caring.” He swallowed hard. “Of everyone I’ve ever known in my life, someone who knew me for only a season loved me so much that he had to die for that love. I can’t . . . rationalize it. I knew this price, but I selfishly ignored it. I’m told he suffered for days. He described it as a blade slowly being pushed into his chest. They tell me that in his last moments he cried out my name.” Ashur’s gray-blue eyes glistened. He took a deep breath. “The guilt I feel over his suffering, his death, and the fact that I erased any chance he had to live out a full and happy life . . . it will torment me forever.”
All went silent in the room as Cleo tried to process what he was telling her. This Ashur seemed more like the sincere man who’d gifted her the night of her wedding with a Kraeshian bridal dagger meant to take either the unhappy bride’s life or the life of her new husband. This Ashur wasn’t spilling out riddles as a way to divert attention from his grief.
But then something occurred to her.
“This is why you’ve been so strange with Nic,” she said. “He doesn’t understand, thinks you’re different, that you feel differently toward him, toward everything. But he’s wrong, isn’t he?”
Ashur didn’t reply to this, but he looked down at his feet.
“You’re afraid he might fall in love with you and that you might hurt him because of that love.”