Evander’s expression froze. “How do you know about that?”
“How do you know about Raska?”
Evander took a rag from the washbasin and wetted it, then he knelt before her and lifted her bloodied arm.
“You don’t have to do that,” Valenna objected.
“Yes, I do,” he said gently. “You always took care of me.” He didn’t sound angry. Worse, his voice was heavy with compassion.With surprising gentleness, Evander wiped her scratches. “Are you going to explain, or do you want me to make assumptions?”
“I grew up in Sennaliath,” Valenna admitted. “Cadmus … is my father.”
Evander’s mouth dropped open.
“Oh, Vander, I’m so sorry,” Valenna stammered. “I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid …”
He sat back on his heels and gazed at her, his face impossibly pale.“Oh, Roz …” he breathed. “You’re Valeria.”
Miserable, she nodded.
“And Tahlia was your mother? Not his first wife, or …”
“Tahlia was my mother. She was the botania, the bringer of spring to Talwaith.”
Evander shut his mouth, his jaw tightening as he dipped the cloth in the basin again and squeezed out the excess water. “And what about you, Val? Are you faithful to Cadmus?”
Valenna rested her head on her fist. “My father is an angry man. He loved my mother. He wants vengeance. I …” She paused and ran her fingers through her hair. “I do not. Not for my mother, anyway. I want it for myself.”
“On Marwenna?”
“No. On my father. He was cruel to me.”
Evander looked thoughtful. “Has your magic always been like this?”
“It is strongest and darkest when I’m angry, and I’ve been very angry since …” She paused. Since he left. Since her world nearly cracked apart when he fell from his dragon and then, six months later, abandoned her.
“Ah,” he said, reaching for her other arm. “I see.”
She pulled away. He didn’t see. For a month after he disappeared, she’d hidden in corners and locked her door as the magic shredded all her dresses, ruined her bed covers, and sprouted carnivorous plants the size of grown men in the washroom. They were the worst months of her life. Worse than Olivette’s exile, even.
“If you’d told me the truth …” he began, but she was in no mood to hear his excuses.
“What? You wouldn’t have run off and abandoned me? You wouldn’t have left me that stupid, asinine note and forgotten to tell me where you went? How could you do that to me? After everything we said to one another and everything I did for you? How?” Crimson bitterweed blossoms tumbled over Valenna’s lap like she was a kettle boiling over. Valenna tried to stifle the magic. “Why didn’t you send me a message? Tell me where you were? You weren’t well, and I was so worried about you.”
He sighed. “If I had, would you have followed me?”
“Yes!”
“Then that’s your answer.”
With a pang of angry grief, Valenna wondered what would have happened if he had written. They had been so close to acataclysm. She was ready to give up searching for Olivette and … she didn’t know what. Marry him? Had that even been an option?
Valenna snatched the cloth from him and crossed to the window. “You don’t get to make that choice for me. You took my agency, tried to control what I did with my future, and that makes me furious. Because it was cruel.”
His eyebrows pinched together, and he tilted his head. “I wasn’t trying to control you, I just wanted to spare you …”
“THAT IS MY CHOICE, NOT YOURS!” An entire gnarled tree, its trunk black and glistening, peeled up the floorboards and unfurled behind her. It reached thorny branches toward Evander, and he jumped away from it, thumping into the wall.
“My father was so cruel to me,” Valenna said, viciously scrubbing her arm with the cloth she took from him. “If I cried, he shut me in my room until the tears dried. If I laughed, he did the same. He made me wear dark clothes and wax my hair and put …” She shuddered. “… put charcoal around my eyes. He controlled me. He made choices for me. So, yes, what you did made me angry, because I thought you were different! I thought you loved me!”
