He crosses the room and stands just a couple of feet in front of me, almost exactly in the same position as when we met the day before. He looks different today. Tired. There are dark circles beneath his eyes.
Almost like he was out late.
He crosses his arms. I’m just beginning to wonder if he’s doing the Larus thing and waiting for me to say something when he asks, “You know I can feel everything you’re feeling, right?”
So hedidfeel me in the throne room. I’m terrified about what he might do, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of sounding afraid. “I’m painfully aware of it,” I say, feigning annoyance.
Two can play at this smirking game.
He comes in closer and drops his voice low. “So then why don’t you even try to disguise your rage? I felt what he felt,” he says, gesturing angrily back to the throne room. “And I felt it from you too. Why wouldn’t you even try to hide it?”
My heart feels like it’s going to beat its way out of my chest. But at least it seems the man next to me also wanted him dead. Thank Sai for that. “If you felt the same thing from me, why am I standing here? Why am I not splattered on the floor in there?”
“Because you’re not a killer.”
I almost laugh. He doesn’t know how wrong he is. Maybe I can’t kill just anyone, that much I’ve proven over the past few days, but Icouldkill him. At this very moment, I could cut his neck and watch that smirk wipe off his face as the blood drained from his body.
My hand itches for my dagger.
But I still it. It’s too soon. We aren’t ready. “How would you know that?”
Ronan sighs, and I swear I see some of Soren’s exasperation in the movement. “I’ve had this gift for more than a decade. I haven’t been able to walk into a room andnotfeel every emotion that every single person has for years. I’d like to think I know people pretty well by now. I know people better than they know themselves. I knew you the moment I met you. Before it, even. I knew you before I’d even walked into the room.
“Rage at me. Tell me how much you hate me. Burn down my palace and curse my name. Gods know I deserve it. But I know—Iknow—you won’t kill me. I know it as well as I know how to breathe. I don’t fear you, Sylvie.”
He stops and looks me right in the eye. “Not for that reason, at least.”
I am floored.
I don’t know how long I stare at him, how long the silence hangs in the air between us, but it’s an uncomfortably long time. “Gods know I deserve it.” What did that mean?
What does he think he deserves?
What did he do?
It can’t be about what he did to us. Why would he regret that—regret killing my father, taking my home, leaving my people to starve—when it has given himeverythingin return? He is the God-King. He is the living God of Selara, the ruler, the man who has all the power and all the world at his disposal.
Does he regret it? Or is there something else that he did that makes him think he deserves my hatred and rage?
And what does he think he knows about me, anyway? All he has felt from me is my anger. He has never felt my grief. He has never felt my joy.
My anger is all I have right now, but it’s not the total of who I am.
“You don’t know me,” I say to him. “You know how I feel about you, but you don’t know me at all. I am more than what I am to you.”
Aren’t I?
I expect him to say something else arrogant about how he’s the only person in this world whose opinion matters, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he smiles lightly. A smile, not a smirk.
“Maybe you’re right.”
And fuck, it disarms me. It’s just like Soren admitting he’s a moron. I doubt he even believes his own words, and he’s probably just trying to manipulate me into liking him, but it works. A little, not a lot.
It makes me ask the question that has been bothering me. I know I wouldn’t have asked him, but I think I may be able to get an honest answer out of him right now. “The man next to me. Was he truly thinking of killing you too? Or could it have been my feelings alone?”
“Oh, he was definitely trying to kill me. I’m absolutely certain of that.”
