What, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the fuck.
“You’re the God-King. You’re a living god. How can you lose your magic?”
“I don’t know. But I think it has something to do with the actions I’ve been taking, the changes I’ve been making—”
“I don’t understand. Those changes are good, and light is good. ‘And she, the lady of light, gave her gift to the best among them.’”
I recite the Codex to him out of habit.
“I don’t think that’s true.” He pauses, and his eyes dart with the memory of something that haunts him. “Iknowit’s not true.”
More sacrilege.
“Light isn’t good. Light is power. The most ambitious, ruthless actions I’ve taken? Those are what strengthen my power. Everything I do out of compassion seems to weaken it. My father knew it. He tried to teach it to me, but I didn’t listen.”
“But your gift is empathy. You can feel what others feel. That isn’t power. It’s kindness. It’s good.”
“It can be, or it can be used to manipulate. When we met—” He looks away. He doesn’t want to say this. “When we met, I thought about using the attraction you felt at our first meeting to get you to like me.”
So he felt it then, the slip of my mind that made me think about kissing him.
And he thought about using it against me. To get close to me, like Larus suspected. Like I suspected.
“But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want totrickyou into liking me. I meant what I said. I could feel who you were before I ever walked into the room. Quinn wanted me to keep you close, to keep an eye on you because she didn’t trust you or Adria. And I wanted to keep you close because…because I wanted to know you. So I followed you as Soren. I thought if I could get to know you without the attraction getting in the way, that would be kinder. Easier on us both if it turned out I was wrong about you.”
Does admitting this now make him more trustworthy?
Or less?
Do I want to trust him because he’s being honest with me, something I haven’t been willing to do with him, or because the very manipulation he claims he hasn’t done has worked on me?
Could this be a part of the same manipulation?
He leans forward a little, and I can see he’s fighting not to touch me. “But then you were attracted to Soren too, for fuck’s sake. And my magic. Gods, it wanted me to deceive you. It strengthened when I lied to you. It weakened when I told you the truth. It’s weakening even now, but I need you to know this. Lying isn’t a shadow-born thing. Not exclusively. I don’t think the distance between shadow and light is as wide as we think it is.”
Is this something he really believes, or is it just something I’ve always wanted to hear?
Did he know that? Could he feel it when we met?
“I can feel your doubt,” he says.
“How can you feel me if you’re losing your magic?”
“It’s not constant. It comes and goes, though I can’t predict when or why. I can still feel most people most of the time, if they aren’t actively trying to hide things from me. I felt the assassin in the throne room. And with you…it’s different. You’re like an alarm bell ringing in my ear. There was a point when I wondered if your presence was the reason for the change. If your voice wasdrowning out the others. As nice as it is to focus only on you, it’s dangerous. But even when you pulled away from me, it didn’t stop wavering. And the decline started before you ever came.”
So he’d definitely noticed when I pulled away.
He must be feeling for my reaction, but I don’t know what to think. The way he talks about me, the way Quinn and Taran were talking. Quinn said he’s obsessed with me. She also called him naïve and idealistic.
There’s a chance that he’s genuine. I would be a fool not to see that. There’s a chance this isn’t a game to him, and that he has meant exactly what he’s said since we met.
He turns to face me, and a feeling washes over me. It’s strange but familiar. Loneliness. A desperate need to be understood, to be accepted.
To be believed.
It’s there for a moment, and then it’s gone.
“I wish I knew what to say to let you know you can trust me. Maybe there’s nothing. Maybe all I can do is prove it to you, over and over, as many times as it takes. I’ll do it if you’ll let me.” He touches my cheek, just a brief brush of the fingertips, but it makes me tremble with longing. “But I’m choosing to trust you. Not just out of gratitude for saving my life, though I don’t know how I can ever repay that. But because I believe you can be trusted. I’m trusting you with my deepest secret, something that can and will destroy me in the wrong hands.”
