“From my own lesson books. The ones I didn’t want to read. I remember.”
As a boy, Kai never liked doing his lessons, but I was hungry for any scrap of information about the world I could get. Hisbooks were as much a draw as his company was. He liked the way I would help him with his schoolwork. But there is no trace of the warmth that shone in his eyes only moments ago. I shiver and try to rub my arms, but my hands stick to the drying streaks of blood. “I should go.”
Nana is going to kill me for not coming back to help with the feast sooner.
“Yes. You should.” Kai blows on the snowflake. It swirls up into the sky. The wind snatches it. “Goodbye, Gwen.”
Am I drunk and imagining things, or was the way he saidgoodbyestrangely cold?
That’s when the screaming starts, jerking my attention to the elevated platform where the royal family’s table sits beneath an arbor decorated with flowers and strings of candles in glass. Overhead, the strange winter storm sweeps away over the castle tower, shredding the fluttering banners into ribbons.
I gasp.
To either side of the petrified queen lie the bloodied bodies of the king and all three of Kai’s brothers. Their skin is sliced by so many small cuts that their faces seem to be literally falling off the bones beneath, but each man bears a ragged hole in his artery as if an animal had torn out his throat.
My breath comes in panicked, shallow gasps. Unable to get enough air, I clutch Kai’s arm and point. A small smile steals over his face.
“I guess that makes me the new king.”
I stare at him in horror. He strides away and never looks back.
This is not the darkness I wanted from him. This is something so cold and callous that I cannot name it.
Chapter 3
Kai’s Ascensionfeast becomes a funeral fast.
Though my wounds sting, it feels self-absorbed to worry about them.
“They’re only scratches, Nana.” Perched on the edge of my tiny bed, I let my grandmother gently wipe away the blood with a warm cloth. Sadness sinks into me. Kai’s father and brothers, all dead. I cannot fathom this calamity.
His reaction chills and puzzles me. Kai never coveted the throne. He loved his family.
“Even a small cut can scar.” Nana leans in to dot salve on my face that smells like lemons and honey. “You have your mother’s looks. Let’s not ruin them. Gods know you have no other advantages in life.”
“Why didn’t you marry Grandfather?” The beer must still have a hold on my tongue. I would never have asked such a question otherwise.
“I couldn’t,” she answers tersely.
“Why not?”
“He was rich and titled. I wasn’t.”
“But you loved each other.”
She sets aside the salve with a sigh. “Love is not the answer to all of life’s problems, Gwen. If anything, it causes more problems than it solves.”
“Any man who values wealth over love isn’t worth having,” I declare.
“A conclusion I also arrived at, a few months too late. I was already pregnant with your father.” Nana studies my face. Satisfied, she sits back in the rickety wooden chair she pulled over. “You come from a long line of people who yearn for more than they can have in life.”
She’s trying not to speak poorly of my mother. My father was enamored of a highborn lady, too. She loved him enough to elope with him, but when her parents cut her off, she regretted losing her life of luxury and left us. She died in disgrace a few years later. Papa died of a broken heart not long after. He always hoped to win her back.
Even as a little girl, I never felt like I was good enough to deserve anyone’s love. That didn’t stop me from wanting it. When I was six, Nana brought me to live with her in the servants’ dormitories at Montrace Castle. Kai’s childhood room happens to overlook the window box where Nana taught me to grow flowers.
That’s how we met. On rooftops, tending a window box of roses. I fell in love with him so young that there has never been space for another to take root in my heart.
I stare blankly at them now, pondering the way we parted. Disturbed by the abrupt change in him.
