“If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d like to speak to the princess … alone.”
Just like that, Cassius’s words caused her rage to spike. Her lip curled, but Reina gave her another look before stepping toward the door.
“I’ll be just outside.” Reina stiffened as she walked past the Vampyr.
The door shutting was louder than a thunderclap, sealing both Cassius and Thalia inside.
They stared at each other, neither moving, as if nothing had altered in the four years since his betrayal.
Cassius even looked the same, held the same arrogant posture. His face had always been one that maidens could die for, but somehow the sharpness had intensified into a sort of heightened beauty that increased the weight in her chest. He didn’t hide the fact that his eyes swept her from head to toe, traveling over the white gown that Katrina had forced her into.
Finally, he met her gaze, lips curling into a smirk. “You haven’t changed.”
Thalia jerked, yet her slippered feet remained glued to the floor. “I wish I could say the same of you.”
Cassius tilted his head, the movement much too smooth—too inhuman. “You changed the drapes.”
Thalia hadn’t been expecting him to saythat. She looked to the drapes that shut out the night. The low fire in her blackened fireplace cast shadows across the deep blue.
She glanced back and nearly jolted again to find Cassius on the couch in her sitting area, not five feet away. Only a low-lying coffee table separated them, and Cassius draped his arm along the back of the velvet couch.
“Didn’t throw out the rug, I see,” Cassius drawled, completely at ease. As if he hadn’t bled out on it after she’d tried to kill him. As if he’d never ripped out her heart, not bothering to watch how she’d bleed.
Thalia didn’t need to look at the worn rug before the fireplace to know it was such a dark crimson that it hid the bloodstains that’d soaked into the fibers like spilled wine.
“I kept it,” she got out.
“Oh, why?” Cassius raised a brow, crossing his ankle over one knee. It would take nothing for her to cross the distance. To grab the knife at his waist and plunge it straight into his chest.
Thalia snarled, fingers clenching at her sides. “As a reminder of what you did.”
A reminder of the night four years ago when he’d appeared in her chambers. When she’d thought he was coming to bed with her as he always did. But instead, she’d woken up to find him transformed into a monster—woken up to the chaos he’d instilled by killing the human prince, Prince Darius, whom she’d been betrothed to. He would have been Agripa’s shining savior. He’d come like a prince from a fairy tale, golden hair blowing in the wind, with the promise of an army to defeat the creatures of the north once and for all.
Back then, Thalia hadn’t hesitated when she stabbed Cassius straight through his black heart.
She should have aimed for his head.
Cassius’s eyes sparked, some of the blue seeming to glow as he said softly, “And what exactly did I do?”
“Don’t play dumb, Cassius. It doesn’t suit you.”
Cassius smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t know what I was forced to choose that day.”
“You chose to betray your kingdom—your people—you betrayedmeto become one of them!” She flung out her hand, her chest heaving as Cassius just sat and watched. “You chose to become a monster.To hunger for blood like a malevolent beast. To destroy ouronechance at hope.”
Cassius met her stare, his eyes hardening like chips of ice. “You mistake me for evil, but I assure you, all I hunger for is power. Humans tend to confuse the two.”
Humans. As if she were so beneath him now.
“Power?” Her lip curled as she spat, “Is that what this was all about? Because you held no power to stop this war, you joined the other side? You wished to be seen as a savior, the hero you used to talk about being when we were children?”
Cassius’s eyes darkened. “You know I held no power here. No power to stop my father from beating my mother until she could barely walk. No power to stop him from fucking his way all across Agripa. I had to sit by while my father ran our name into the mud. I had to listen to the vicious whispers of your mother’s court, about how the Tareino family were no more than dogs begging for any amount of scraps the royals would give them. I was helpless to do anything back then.”
“Helpless? Helpless to stop the monsters preying on innocents, so you became one yourself? Did it make you feel powerful doing that?” Thalia scoffed.
A muscle in Cassius’s jaw flickered. “The day my father beat my mother so badly she never woke up is the day I vowed to never sit idly by while thoseinnocentssuffered. You know this. Why else would I have joined the city watch all those years ago? Why else would I have worked my way up to be captain? Moving up the ranks did nothing to stop the issues happening on our doorstep. Not when those in charge are still able to dictate from their gilded thrones the lives of those below them. But now I have the power to change the world we live in.”
“And what of your vow to me?” Thalia hissed, stepping toward him. “What of your vow to be by my side? To ensure that what happened to my family never happens to anyone again? You swore to help me fix Agripa—you swore to stop this war—”
