“Want to try that again?” I ask.
“I do not know.”
I really thought Vexar was some bastion of honor and goodness, but he’s just as fucked up and fallible as I am.
I shake my head, disappointed that he won’t admit the truth. “If you believed what you were told by your mother and the Senate, why the guilt?” I raise my brows. “Why did you say youknewabout the ships if you thought they were just rumors?”
His gaze drops to the bed between us, and my disappointment grows.
I try a different tactic. “Let me guess, you knew you werebeing fed a pile of shit and instead of pushing back, you just … looked the other way. And now you’re feeling guilty because you want to fuck someone who suffered because of your inaction. Am I close?”
“I trusted the Senate’s investigation. But even if I had not, what would you have had me do?”
Is he fucking serious?
The longer I stare at him, the clearer it becomes that he’s completely serious. He thinks that because the Senate said ‘no’, he couldn’t do anything. I rub my hand over my mouth, confused and unsure.
This empire profits from slavery and barbarism, while Vexar clearly disagrees with those things. He didn’t know about the slavery, but he did know about the barbarism, and instead of pushing back, he just went along with it. He feels guilty that he didn’t follow through on the rumors of the slave-ships, but he also didn’t think he had another option. How is it that the guy who’s supposed to become king ends up feeling functionally powerless?
“You’re supposed to be next in line for the throne, right?”
“Yes,” he says, looking confused.
“But you didn’t feel like you could push back against your own government?”
He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “The Senate’s word is law. I cannot break the law.”
“So you let countless people get sold into slavery so you didn’t have to break the law?”
He shakes his head. “It is not that simple.”
“Itisthat simple,” I say. “Tell me, if there were a law that said it was illegal to save babies from burning buildings, and you saw a baby in a burning building, what would you do?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Answer me,” I say forcefully. “Would you let the baby burn because the law said you had to?”
I watch his mind spin, searching for an answer. Everything I know about him makes it very clear that his heart is in the right place, but it seems rules matter to him more than his own morality, and if that’s the case, I’ve tied myself to a very dangerous person. Someone who would sacrifice anything for the sake of law and order.
“Why was the law made? Who is it meant to protect?” he finally asks.
God dammit.
“That,” I say, pointing at him. “That’s the fucking problem.” My calm burns away in an explosion of anger. “I thought you were better than that. I thought you were something different, but your head’s so far up your own ass that you think being a good person is the same fucking thing as being an obedient one. But it’s not the same thing.” I suck down a deep breath, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Following unjust laws doesn’t mean your actions are free from consequences, Vexar! You can’t just brush away atrocities by saying, ‘I was following the law.’ That’s … fuck! That’s the kind of shit the worst people in human history did.” I drag my fingers through my hair. “Are you really willing to divorce your own morality to follow some fucked up ruling? Because if that’s who you are, I need to know right the fuck now.”
Hurt etches deep lines into his face, but he stays silent.
I let out a heavy breath. “Iknowyou don’t agree with everything your people do. Iknowyou don’t agree with slavery. Iknowyou didn’t want to kill anyone in the arena. I canfeelyou’re fucking heart! But if you can’t use that pain, that regret, that horror to drive your actions, then you’re no different from Gaius or any other monster out there.”
“I am not a monster,” he says.
I’m about to keep yelling when clarity hits me like a baseball bat to the ovaries. Every time he asked if I was afraid of him. The deep hurt over killing his opponent in the arena. The proposal he refused to accept. His desire to stop those slave-ships. The deep wound in his side. The lack of medical care.
Someone realized that Vexar isn’t the monster they needed him to be, and because of that, they don’t want him to be king. There’s no way an empire supported by slavery would allow someone like Vexar to rise to power. They wouldn’t be able to trust him.
My gut was right. He was never meant to leave here alive.
Even if we survive this place, what then? What chance do we have at stopping Gaius or those ships?
