By the time I made it there, I already knew who stood on the other side. I opened it, stepped out, and closed it behind me before facing her.
She stood wrapped in a gray wool coat, two leather suitcases at her feet. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight knot, and she carried the look of a woman leaving a place she would never return to.
“Hello, Kael.”
“Hello, Selena.”
“The siege is over, thanks to you. They’ve already begun rebuilding the gatehouse.” She drew a breath. “I wanted to see you before I…”
“Before you left.”
Perhaps it was this strange new elation that had unlocked old chambers in my mind, but when I looked at Selena, I didn’t see the woman I’d grown to despise. I saw the choices we’d made. The things that had eaten us alive. I saw the pain beneath the cold mask she wore. I remembered the girl who cried for each death, who sat beside the dying in hospices and soothed their minds, who buried herself beneath a false righteousness we had all been forced to wear.
I saw what Drachenfels Keep had taken from her.
I saw the friend I’d lost…
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything.”
Surprise softened her face, and she smiled. “She’s really changing you. Foolish of me to thinktheCourt Wizard was mine to change, when the gods had written another name beside yours.”
So she knew about Evie. Her eyes drifted to the door as if she could see straight through it. Then her smile faded, leaving only wistfulness in its wake.
I was about to apologize again, unsure why. Maybe for everything that had happened. Maybe for not being the man she’d wanted. But she stopped me with a raised hand. “I always knew, Kael. And I knew the moment I saw her at the Court that she’d always been the one. The one you ran to when you vanished from your duties. The one who filled your thoughts while you played the merciful hand of the king.”
A pause. A single tear slipped down her cheek. But it was not sadness.
It was resolve.
“Selena…” I didn’t know what to say. I never did in moments like these. This was all new to me. “The night of the ball, I used you?—”
“No, Kael,” she cut in. “Iused you. I thought enough pain might drown the screams. But I was wrong.” She brushed the tear away. “That’s why I’m leaving. There’s work I need to do if I want any peace, and I can’t find it here. Not after everything that happened and everything that I did. This place is my past. I must go find where my future lies.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. And maybe that’s what’s most exciting.” She smiled, then lifted both suitcases. Before turning away, she added, “She sees the very best in you, Kael. For the sake of the entire kingdom, do not disappoint her.”
I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
“Goodbye, Kael.”
“Goodbye, Selena.”
And she disappeared into the torch-lit shadows of the halls.
I returned to my bed, where Evie still lay sleeping. She had turned onto her side. I slipped beneath the covers and spooned her.
I couldn’t promise I would never disappoint her, but I could promise I’d try not to.
I stroked her long, dark brown curls and whispered into her ear, “I love you, Evangelina.”
She didn’t hear me.
Chapter 29
Evie
Dawn slipped into the room in rose-gold light, warming my tired body in the absence of curtains. Kael’s arm curled around me, pressing me against the heat of his chest. I wished I could stay there forever, forgetting the world outside and the blight that still festered in Drachenfels Keep.
