Shaking my head, I try to get back on track. The tavern and Ray’s fading brother are my main concerns. “Do you need me to turn around?”
“Wherever you are now needs your attention,” Zarev says dryly, narrowing his eyes at me. I’m not sure what’s crawled under his skin, or if it’s just the stress of everything, but I swear there’s something he wants to say but won’t. “Best finish the path you’re on. You’ll tell us if there’s somethingyouneed?”
Tell my friends about my past with the Ice Queen, who’s been asleep for one hundred years, under the guise that a civilian pricked her finger and cast her into an endless sleep? No, I know enough details of what happened to see this through on my own.
Maybe once Neve wakes things can be different, but I still have no desire to share the truth about my past with my Hell Brothers. Being beneath the lake certainly didn’t change that.
“I’ll tell you if something comes up,” I say carefully, letting the lie slide off my tongue.
“So will we,” Z replies. “But there is something else you should be aware of.”
Groaning, I glare ahead at the snow and wonder how much longer this will take. “What?”
“You know how I told you about the beans being something Dahlia saved all these years, even since before we met you.”
A momentary flash of memory slices through my mind, happening across a kindly father and three peculiar preteens. At the time I was wary, and so were they, but it’s the only instance I had to get to know Raymundo’s father, Jacob. “Yeah…”
“Ray is throwing a fit thinking this beanstalk might somehow be a lead toward his father,” Z goes on. That’s the kind of thing I was worried he might say.
“His father is dead. We all know that.”
“Well, Ray seems to have forgotten,” he hisses. “He’s been having some deep conversation with Rapunzel most of today about parental loss and all that shit.”
“Didn’t you also lose your parents?”
“Apparently it’s more fun to talk to her because she’s still recovering from it,” he groans. “I know she’s still torn up about her kingdom’s demise, and she has every right to be sad. We haven’t really had many opportunities to talk about it.”
Tressa,the Golden Kingdom. Destroyed because of the madness of its king and his all-powerful daughter. It sounded wild when I first learned through Dima that she was supposedly a killer, and it makes me more curious about the Golden Princess. There’s enough going on, and if I’m going to inquire about her murderous hand I’d like to meet the princess myself.
“Ban.”
Turning my attention back to the stone, I wonder how long Zarev’s been rambling without me listening. His princess is getting in his head, cutting through the stoic mask I’m accustomed to. “Gloomy.”
“Enough with the nicknames,” he snaps, and I can’t fight the smirk that curves the corner of my lips. “Odette mentioned that you called Ray ‘Arrows.’ Aren’t we past those childish monikers?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I ask dryly, unable to stop thinking that time has truly robbed Zarev of all joy. He’s not so cold now that he’s spent some time with Rapunzel, who, from what I’ve gleaned, has some badass powers and keeps him on his toes.
Still, the longer he looks at me, the more I can feel his real questions burning between us. Zarev usually only reaches out to me about business matters. Ray’s the one who checks in on everyone, and once upon a time, he was the reason we would get together at all.
A sudden pain hits my chest, and I press a hand there outside his line of sight. Thinking about the past always makes me ache for what’s lost.
“Why did the Shadow Man only show himself to you two?” Z continues, an edge of bitterness in his voice. I’m aware he still struggles with his place in this world since losing his family and becoming a Reaper. “Odette says she met him once before in the past, so he didn’t come out of hiding or hibernation to see the three of you escape the caverns. He’s evaded us all this time and offered up no answers about why he saved us.”
I purse my lips. Saving us isn’t exactly how I view what the Shadow Man did. Instead of letting us pass on peacefully, he instead condemned us to this life, doing his so-called bidding. The fact that this happened to me not once, but twice, really makes me question who has it out for me.
“You go and almost die. That should make him appear apparently,” I say, giving Z a smile through the stone that’s all teeth.
“You understand my point, Ban,” Z groans. “For him to show up now, after all these years? There’s no reason he should have shown up, and for the princess no less.”
That’s true. Had Ray been given the chance, I’m under no illusion that he would never allowed Odette to drown. He was hyper-focused on her when the caverns filled with water, and had his sights set on her until the Shadow Man intervened.
But why? Even if he helped her once, my experience with the Shadow Man is that help comes at a cost. He helped us live by gifting us a curse. If he saved her life twice, what is the price?
“We understand no more about the Shadow Man than the Mad Queen,” I reply, sighing. “I’m working on something up here at the moment, but perhaps when it is done, I can meet up with all of you. We can figure out what to do about the Mad Queen at least, and her Flowerborne storming across the lands.”
“What we need to do is get into her court and end her,” Zarev snaps, some of that old hate bleeding into his words. I remember how much he despised her, even before the four of us were changed. “Then there will be peace. Whatever ties there are between Wonderland and Camelot, we would do well to see those end soon.”
“One would hope,” I agree. “Sometimes overthrowing the ruler doesn’t lead to a better tomorrow. It destroys it.”
