Her lip curled to her cheek, suggesting he was right.
“You could have had everything you ever wanted with me. With her…” He knew she was referring to Eilee. “… you had a superficial reverence from others. But with me, I could give you power. Real power. The sort that was beyond just what your appearance offered. You wanted respect, I know you did. You wanted higherlings to think more of you than your body. And I could have made them do that.”
“You overestimate your own power.”
The orange flame from one of the lanterns around them glistened in her pupils.
“No, Treycore. It’syouwho underestimates that.”
“And you think that’s enough for me to stay with you?”
Her eyes dulled. Her expression softened. “What you feel for that foul-smelling creature, that’s lust. Lust besieges the heart and makes the mind mad. It holds a creature hostage until it disappears, leaving emptiness where there had been life.”
“I know."
Her eyebrows quivered as she seemed to struggle to keep from appearing affected by the remark.
“You can’t know that what you feel for him is love. You must know that. You don’t know love until all these distracting sensations have faded and you are left feeling totally committed to that special one. Your ideals about romance are clouding your judgment. How senseless it was of you to enter in to such an agreement with me. You never would have done that had you been in your right mind. You hardly even considered it. So let me make you another offer… another contract.”
“Which is?”
“Give up this boy. Stay with me, not as my prisoner, but as my partner. I know we’ve had difficult times. I’ve been cruel and wicked and hateful. But all of that was because I needed you so much. Because I loved you. I still do. Even after everything between us, that lust that I spoke of so far gone, I still require you with me. That’s why I did all this. Because what is my life if I don’t have you in it? It’s these realms of darkness and pain.”
“You made these realms what they are to you.”
“Don’t blame that on me. I’m not the one who abandoned me.”
“Abandoned you? You abandoned me.”
Her eyebrow rose, seemingly with her curiosity about the meaning behind his words.
“You’re not the Vera I fell in love with,” he explained.
She set her fork on her plate, her gaze drifting across the food before her, though clearly she was contemplating so much more. “This is about the scars, isn’t it?”
Treycore knew why she was referencing the event. When she was injured in battle, scarred across her face, she’d sought the Almighty to restore her, and indeed, it had been a moment he disapproved of. It had also been the beginning of a rapid downward spiral in her character. In her commitment to her savior, she had given up her morals, her values—the same ones that she had when they’d first met.
Vera’s gaze shifted back to him. “You never did approve of my allegiance with the Almighty.”
“I didn’t approve of your reason for aligning with Him. Not out of principle, but out of greed.”
“You saw what I looked like. I was horrid. Why do you think I did that? For me? Do you think I cared how I looked? Oh, you never had to hear what the immortals said about the magnificent Treycore being with the most hideous creature in all the realms, when he could have been with the most beautiful.”
“Your truth is revealed in your own words. You didn’t fear my judgment. You feared the judgment of the others. Because even when I saw you, wounded and defeated, I never saw you differently. I never thought you any worse than you had been before. How can you not understand that? Everyone reminds me that I had the greatest beauty in all the realms, but they were wrong, because I see the world as they cannot see it. This form has given me a gift the Almighty had never even considered. I see where beauty really is. And when you sold your allegiance for something so vain, so trite, I saw you for what you really were, and every day, I watched the beauty I loved grow more and more disgusting, even with her restored.”
Vera looked off like she was considering her decision, her choices.
If she truly was, Treycore would have been amazed, for it was rare for Vera to doubt her own wisdom.
“That boy you look down on,” he continued, “is more beautiful than anything a creature like you could understand. And what you’ve done to him, you will pay for.”
He set his napkin on his plate and rose from the table.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to take a stroll around your fashionable home, and then I’d like to have dinner with Kid… if you could arrange that for me.”
He stormed out, heading through the main hallway.
***
