I recoil at that, my stomach roiling with disgust. Pinning him with a glare, I back away from him until I feel myself come up against the tree again.
“That’s the look I remember.” He shakes his head and lets out a bitter laugh. “That’s how everyone looked at me before my mother sent me to school. That’s how my peers looked at me before they kicked me unconscious while calling me a fae-killer. Thank you for the reminder. It helps me think maybe Mother was right in never wanting me to come back here. Maybe her actions had been done out of love after all.” With that, he turns around and stalks away from me.
I stare after him, mind reeling. I should be satisfied. He told me what I needed to hear. He gave me the fuel I need to end his life.
But I can’t help feeling like he still hasn’t given me the full story. There’s more and I need to hear it from his lips.
I race after him and grab hold of his wrist just as he reaches the outer veil of the willow branches.
He stares down at my hand. I know he could easily shake me off, but he doesn’t. His gaze slowly slides to mine.
“Tell me the whole story,” I say.
“What else is there?”
“Everything. What happened? How did it start? Why did you kill her? It was ruled as self-defense and…I want to know why.”
He holds my gaze for several moments, eyelids narrowed to slits. Then, slowly, his face softens. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
He steps farther under the tree, returning to safety from prying eyes. Crossing his arms, he plants his back against the trunk of the tree. He looks so tired now. So defeated. With a sigh, he closes his eyes and hangs his head. “The summer I was ten, I stayed at my father’s manor for a week.”
I hold my breath and wait for him to continue.
“He was still my hero then. I didn’t understand why my mother had left him and wanted nothing more in the world than to be at his side. It was supposed to be the best week of the summer. I was convinced Father would teach me to fight, share with me his skills as a brother in the Order of Strength. The reality was far from that. The week passed and I barely saw my father for more than a few minutes a day. He spent much of his time out of the home, and every night he went to the cellar. Others came too. A few nights that week, the front drive was littered with coaches. I was forbidden from seeing what all the fuss was about, so naturally my curiosity grew unbearable. It was my last day with Father and he was gone again. So I did as any boy my age would do. I stole his keys and crept into the cellar.”
He folds his arms tighter, shoulders stiff. “That’s when I found what he’d been hiding. His fighting ring. It was more than just a makeshift arena, it was…horrifying. Blood stained the middle of the floor, iron weapons hung in elegant glass cases, rusty cages lined the walls. Only one cage was occupied, but the empty shackles in the others told me they once had been too. I thought the body belonged to something dead, so I crept closer to investigate. Then the figure began to stir, and I realized there was something living in there. A fae. She had pointed ears and brown and white scales covered in scars and bloody gouges.”
His description sounds just like Zara, aside from the bloody gouges. I remember her saying the murdered fae had been her sister.
He continues. “She began to whimper when she saw me, cowering away from the cage doors. I told her I wasn’t going to hurt her and she began to calm down. Then she begged me to open the cage and let her free. I was nervous to oblige and said I’d get my father to help instead. I was certain he knew nothing about what was happening in his cellar. How could he? He was strong and good and kind. The fae pleaded, and she sounded so miserable I knew I had to help her. I finally did as she asked, unlocking her cage and iron cuffs with my stolen set of keys. But as soon as she was out of the cage, she turned on me and attacked, shouting that she wouldkill his vile spawn. She raked serrated claws over my arms, my belly, dug her teeth into my shoulder and tore the flesh from my bones.”
I shudder at the reminder of the scar tissue I glimpsed on his shoulder when I saw him shirtless in the training room.
He absently runs a hand over the shoulder, expression vacant, posture hunched. His voice is quiet, strained, as he proceeds with the tale. “I knew nothing of fighting then. Had no concept of how to defend myself. All I knew how to do was run, but when I did, she followed. She tackled me and slammed my head into one of the weapons cases, shattering the glass. I fell to the ground, felt my hands sliced by falling glass and blades. Anger coursed through me then, and I felt a hatred I’d never known before. She came at me again, gnashing her teeth as she charged. I rose to my feet to meet her, and in my hand was one of the weapons—an iron dagger—that had fallen free from the broken case. Her teeth came toward my neck, but my blade met her throat first. With a hiss, she staggered back. There she hovered for a moment, hand clenching the bleeding wound at her neck. Then she charged again, throwing herself on me. I fell under her weight and defended myself with the weapon I still held, stabbing again and again, unable to see beyond the tears in my eyes, unable to hear anything but my own sobs.
“Soon I realized she wasn’t moving anymore. And it wasn’t just tears in my eyes. It was blood. I struggled to free myself from under her lifeless form, and when I managed to get loose, I ran. In a daze, I left Father’s manor and fled toward home—to Mother’s townhouse in the city. On the way, I was stopped by a couple in a coach who saw me drenched in blood. They took me to the sheriff where I relayed what happened. By the evening, my father was taken into the sheriff’s custody, but it took far longer for me to understand what had happened. That my actions had exposed an illegal fighting ring. Myfather’sfighting ring. That he’d been the one to cage the fae. That the one I killed had been locked in his cellar for three years, cuffed in iron, tortured, and forced to fight both her own kind and humans. At first, I didn’t believe it, but soon there was no evidence to refute the claims. Furthermore, there were new claims that I hadn’t killed in self-defense but murder. I ignored the tales that suggested I’d been training in the ring myself when the incident occurred, but when I heard how weak the fae was when she died, how the first wound I inflicted had been enough to kill her…I started seeing things differently. Instead of recalling the way she charged me after I sliced her throat, I realized it was more likely she’d fallen forward and I was merely too stunned to get out of the way. And when I stabbed her all those extra times, fueled by hate…” He pauses and runs his hands over his arms as if to ward away a chill.
My heart aches and my hands burn with their desire to console him. I take a step closer but keep my hands firmly at my sides. “Dorian…”
He meets my eyes, expression vacant. “Now you know the truth. I’m a killer.”
“Itwasself-defense.”
“It’s hard to believe that matters when I recall with such vivid detail the rage that filled my heart and infused my hands when I ended that fae’s life. You’ll never know what that’s like. To be disgusted by what you’ve done but unsure if you regret it.”
I step closer again, my skin prickling from what I’m about to say. “I know far more than you realize.”
He scoffs. “I doubt that.”
I take a deep breath. “I killed someone.”
33
He snaps his mouth shut. “What?”
I repeat it again, slower. “I killed someone.” I’m not sure what even compels me to say it, only that I feel an agonizing need to show him I understand.
