A grave silence met his words as the entire hall fell quiet. Then they whispered among themselves and I could hear the questions, understand the confusion, even from where I stood beside the King. Minotaurs? Murders? Mortals?
“Damned, indeed,” the King replied with a sigh. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Canis Morningstar, you are aware of the punishment for circumventing banishment.”
“Death,” Lark answered and the whispers stopped.
I couldn’t breathe. My gaze snapped to Lark’s to find that he was already looking my way. That sorrow from before intensified a thousandfold. Execution. That was the punishment for his return home. He had known that. He had known the punishment was death and he had saved me anyway, had used his magic to protect me knowing that they could trace him from it, to find him and bring him here to face trial, to die.
Why would he do that? Why would the man who kidnapped me almost sixty years ago go to such trouble to save me now?
I blinked and looked away, to Cass who was weeping on the onyx floor, to Rook who had visibly paled as he awaited his own death sentence. No. I didn’t want this. I would never forgive them, any of them, for what they did, for what they hid from me. But I didn’t want them to die. I didn’t want them to be executed.
“Kill me,” Lark said then and my gaze snapped back to him, though he was looking at his father now, hands raised, imploring. “But do not kill Rook. He was just following orders, serving as my protection as you assigned him to centuries ago. Do not punish him for my insolence.”
The King looked from his son to Rook and back. He frowned deeply, eyes widening as he took in the boy pleading for his friend’s life before him. His son. A man he had loved for centuries. And now he was considering killing him. Because he had to. Because it was the law. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to push the feelings away.
They were strong, thrumming into me and against me from every angle. Anguish, sorrow, dread, fury, desperation. No one was happy about this. No one was pleased. Even Ursa’s lips were set in a grim line. This was a family tragedy. This was an unforgivable choice. And yet…
“Canis Morningstar, I hereby sentence you to death,” the King announced with a heavy voice and Cass collapsed with a horrific wail, “for the crime of circumventing exile. You will be hung in the courtyard tomorrow morning at sunrise.”
“No!” Cass was screaming, clinging to Ursa’s legs, tears streaming freely down her porcelain cheeks. “No, father, please! Don’t do this! Don’t do this! No!”
Ursa leaned down and whispered something before gripping Cass under the arm and hauling her to her feet.
“Lark,” Rook said quietly.
The warrior Fae had finally looked up, his wide, wet eyes on his friend. Lark gave one solemn nod as the guards stepped forward to lead him away.
“Father, stop this!” Cass was screaming again, clawing against Ursa to get to the King. “You can stop this, please!”
But the King’s jaw was set as he watched his son being taken from the room in chains, the crowd of onlookers parting as he went, courtiers and courtesans from places I didn’t know, places I had never heard of. They watched with wide eyes, slacked jaws, as their prince was led away to await his execution.
Lark didn’t look back. Not once.
I stared into the back of his head as hard as I could but he disappeared beyond the pillars and was gone. The others began to file out quietly, blinking away the shock of the events that had just transpired and moving along automatically, putting as much distance between themselves and the grieving royal family as they could. Cass was still wailing, still begging for her brother’s life. Rook was being unshackled. He stared down at the chains as they fell away with cold, dead eyes.
“Come,” the King whispered under his breath as he passed me on his way toward the doors behind us. “Now.”
Ursa was busy with her sister. Rook was surrounded by guards. I just turned my back on all of them and followed the King through the doors from which I had entered. I didn’t dare to stop to catch my breath until I made it all the way back to my room.
Tears were streaming down my cheeks but they were hidden in the dark of the hall as I walked swiftly down it. I wiped them away with a shaky hand as I opened my door and plunged inside. Shutting it tightly behind me, I crossed the room until I was standing in the center, pacing back and forth at the foot of the enormous bed. I clutched my stomach, bent over slightly, chest heaving. A sob escaped me, wracking my body as I shook with silent grief. My knees buckled and I slumped to the carpet, shuddering as the whimpers I was fighting to hold at bay escaped in desperate clusters.
I should be glad. This was justice served. The man who had stolen me from my mother when I was only an infant, the man who had determined my fate in a way he had no right to do, the man who had lied to me for weeks, who had kept secrets from me while claiming we were friends. He was going to be executed for his crimes. After sixty years, my kidnapper was seeing justice.
But the words he had spoken gave me pause.
I made my arguments against exile when you passed your last sentence. I told you why I did what I did. I told you my justifications. You chose not to hear them.
Justifications.
He’d had his reasons for stealing me away. He’d had excuses. Did it matter what they were? Could anything make up for what he’d done? Even if they could, they didn’t make up for the lies he told for six weeks, the way he didn’t tell me who I was the moment he knew.
I hated him but I ached for him. I hated him in the way that you could only hate someone you had loved.
But what right did I have to claim I’d ever loved him? I didn’t even know him. We had only just met. But there was something there, something that even I couldn’t define. Everything felt bigger when I was around him. Emotions were stronger, colors were more vibrant, power was more evident. So maybe I had never had a choice. My uncle used to always talk about fate. That sometimes there were bigger things in store for us and sometimes we just wanted to believe there was. That was what astrology was about, the small science, the people who looked up at the stars and believed they foretold their future. Because they needed to feel that they had a future.
Lark was my past but he also felt like my future. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t define the connection between us but it was there and now, losing him, it felt like losing a part of myself too. A part I should hate. A part I should revile and want to be rid of. But I didn’t. Because that part kept me alive. That part made life bigger, brighter, more vibrant. And that part was dying.
I screamed then, unable to contain my emotions any longer, sinking into the carpet in a puddle of sorrow and despair as Cass had done in court only moments ago.
