His rage at being stopped again dissipates instantly at my questioning. It’s a slipping of his angry mask once more, betraying the more guilty man beneath. Brief, but there.
“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters, looking away. His body language, expression, tone…it’s all the answer I need.
But I want to hear it anyway. “It does to me.”
“It will be easier if you hate me,” he whispers, deep and low.
“I’ll decide who and what I hate.”
Evander presses his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Goddess help me. You are relentless.”
“I know.” Why does that bring a tired smile to my face?
Evander looks around, somewhat nervously. There must be no one he can see or sense to be alarmed about because he finally says, as quietly as possible, “Conri commanded it. He saw you that night when you took Aurora. He wanted to hurt you. I tried to refrain, but Bardulf had heard the order. We had…a minor disagreement over it. But there was no getting around it.”
A minor disagreement… The bruise I saw on his cheek when I first laid eyes on him is so faint it’s hard to see now. But it looks like someone might have punched him.
“Were…” The thoughts take a second to form in my head. They’re darker than I imagined and my mind doesn’t want to believe them. “Were you supposed to kill me?”
He says nothing. Once more, it’s my answer. My blood is cold. I will be forced to marry a man who had ordered my death.
“Were you going to tell him that you had done the deed when he asked? That you had killed me?”
“Bardulf knew the truth.” Evander shrugs. “I would’ve said you weren’t there—the truth. Conri wouldn’t have faulted us for not pursuing you when our focus was Aurora and we had her.”
“And if Bardulf hadn’t been there?”
“What does this hypothetical matter?” He sighs.
“It matters very much to me.”It matters if you’re protecting me or not, in your own way.
“I told you, I have done horrible things. Things that would make your throat burn with nausea. I will continue to do horrible things, so long as that man is in power.” The words are direct and angry. Yet, as soon as he finishes his outburst, his expression softens. “But…it is not because I want to. I desperately, desperately cling to whatever shred of decency I can. Because…”
“Because?” I breathe, hanging on his words.
He takes a small step forward, voice dropping even further. “Because I like to dream that, one day, I might be free of him. And, when I am, I would like to be a man that can sleep at night.”
The words slowly sink into me. His expression is somewhere between tortured and desperate. Seeking. Asking me for a forgiveness that I would’ve never even contemplated giving a man who had wronged me in the way he has.
But…things suddenly don’t seem so simple.
“We should join the rest before they wonder.” Evander breaks the moment by backing away. “If I’m going to sneak you away later, we can’t have people already suspicious of us, and there are enough eyes on you already.”
“One more thing.” I stop him for a final time. “Really, it’s the last thing,” I assure his agitated expression. “My barrier, how did you?—”
“You suspected correctly. I used the fire spirit to burn through it,” he says, matter-of-fact. Never have I hated being right. “Almost couldn’t do it, though. No physical items worked and the spirit was nearly not strong enough.”
“So my magic wasn’t bad,” I whisper.
“Quite the contrary.” The corners of Evander’s lips tug slightly, as though he is fighting a smile. The expression is quickly abandoned. “Now, let’s move along.”
“Right,” I murmur as he steps around me.
Once more I’m looking at his back. At those scars that match Conri’s massive paws, the wolf king who leaves nothing but damage and heartache in his wake. Evander might have been the one to break my barrier, take Aurora, and burn my home to ash, but it was at the direction of the wolf king. As he tells it…he almost was trying to protect me the entire time.
But can I believe him?I answer my own question when it occurs to me that Aurora trusts him, too. At least some amount. Evander was the one to free her, more or less.
I start to walk, falling in at Evander’s side, our strides matching in length and gait. I fight the urge to look up at him. To continue studying this strange man that I only think I’m just beginning to know.
