House of Kings(48)

“Alivia?” she asks in concern. I hear her cross the library and she squats beside me, dropping to my level. “There was no right choice to make. You had to do something or he would have killed the Sheriff and Trinity.”

“It’s not just that,” I say in a flat, scratchy voice. I don’t look away from Henry. “Rath just left.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in a few hours,” she says in confusion over my reaction. “Supply runs don’t normally take too long.”

I shake my head. “You don’t understand,” I manage to get out. “He’s seen the darkness I’ve become. He sees that I am no longer the girl Henry would have called his daughter. He saw me for what I am. And he’s gone.”

Lillian does not say anything and I don’t look away from my father’s serious, deep eyes. Those eyes hold their own secrets. He did things that were dark and vengeful. But he never sank to the level I have.

“You should go to Cyrus,” Lillian says. Her voice is tight. “He seemed rather eager to speak to you.”

I nod, blinking five times fast. I feel as if I should be stiff and moving should be difficult, trying to hold in all these feelings. But my new body betrays me and moves with perfect ease. I climb from the chair, dropping the blanket on the floor. I cross the library without looking at Lillian.

I do not have to ask where Cyrus is. I can sense him. Hear him breathe. Hear the carpet brush beneath his feet. He’s in my bedroom, waiting for me.

The door does not squeak as I open it. Cyrus stands in the middle of the room, hands folded behind his back. The expression on his face when he looks at me is disappointed. I’ve let him down, too.

“I’m not her,” I tell him quietly, shaking my head. Tears threaten to pool in my eyes when there’s a bite at the back of them, but once again, my new body makes that difficult too.

“And you are entirely sure?” he asks, walking forward. He stalks toward me, as if I am prey and he is a lion. Everything in the way he looks at me is different now. No love. No hope. Only disappointment. “You once let on hope. You said things. You made me believe.”

“I know,” I say quietly, with a little nod. I feel eerily calm. The King may well wish to kill me for what I did. But in this moment of self-hatred, I find I do not care. “And I thought maybe. Just maybe. I wished for it for a time. But it didn’t make it true.”

“You let me believe, Alivia!” He suddenly screams the words in my face.

I let my eyes snap closed and wait for the final blow—for my second and last death.

“Hope is an unbearable thing,” he says, this time quieter and under control, though through clenched teeth. “Because every time…every damn time I think this will be the one. Surely, after two hundred seventy-one years, ten months, and six days, surely this will be the one.”

When the blow never comes, I let my eyes slide back open. And there is all the pain I could imagine on his face. There is the death of hope. There is the disappointment. “I’m so sorry,” I breathe out. I am so very sorry for so very many things.

Cyrus studies me, his eyes flicking between mine. He stands like that for a long time. As if to be absolutely sure that there is not something I’m suppressing. Holding back. Something he isn’t missing.

I am absolutely sure. I’ve remembered nothing. I’ve felt nothing.

“I’m not Sevan,” I say, assuring the finality.

“No,” he finally breathes. “You’re not.”

And having confirmed his answer, he steps away from me. He grabs the bag with his things and walks for the door. “I’ll be sleeping in my own room tonight. I shall give you your space. We will depart come nightfall.”

I nod, unable to say anything else. And he walks out, shutting the door behind him.

Numbly, I walk to the window. Light begins to glow on the horizon and I remember that it’s the first of March, but the view outside reveals no hints at spring. Random, uneven bouts of snow still fall from the sky, adding to the nearly three feet of cover. The sky brightens momentarily with a bolt of lightning. The clouds continue their slow swirl, circling our abandoned town.

It’s so grim. So fortune telling of death and unhappiness.

My eyes fall to the small graveyard that is slowly disappearing beneath the snow.

My entire family is in the ground. My uncle. My mother. My father.

Ian left me. Rath abandoned me. Cyrus will depart soon.

And who am I left with?

Falling for the man who would one day be my worst enemy was the most dangerous thing I could have done—and I was constantly surrounded by people who wished to kill me. He made me vulnerable. My feelings for him left me exposed to those who would manipulate and take advantage of me.