ROWAN
“Tell me where your head is with this?” Sebastian asks as we reach a parlor on the main floor.
“She’s Samil’s sister,” I state, ire lacing my voice as I walk to the window and give him my back because my face is likely saying too much. “She’s an assassin.” And I fell for her. I shouldn’t feel betrayed, but I do.
“Do you believe she was going to follow through with the plot against me? That she wasn’t going to kill Signoria Batorini and this Antonia woman instead?”
I hitch up a shoulder. “The woman is skilled. I think at this point, that much is obvious. Her words could all be lies.”
“You don’t believe that,” he says, his voice dropping a notch.
“I don’twantto believe that. There’s a difference.”
“I believe her,” he throws out, and I turn, surprised by that. My brother looks tired. Like he’s aged ten years overnight. I hate that he’s here. I hate that this called him back to the palace when his focus should be on his wife and children. He hasn’t even seen Phaedra, Sabrina, or Zayer to tell them the news.
This is fucked allaround.
“It doesn’t matter, Sebastian. She was going to kill two people. Hard to glance over that. It’s not exactly something we can ignore.”
“No,” he agrees. “And it will be dealt with, though I wonder if that would be considered self-defense more than anything.”
“Self-defense?”
“You told me of the scars. I think we know where she got them.”
I release a weighted breath. “Trusting her is a trap.”Part of the curse, I don’t add. “Marcella went to the hotel willingly to meet her. She only fessed up to everything once we caught her, and we already know how skilled a liar she is.”
“Do you believe that or are you just angry with her?”
It’s a valid question.
“She knows about Marie,” I tell him, changing course since I can’t answer that. “When I saw her in the hotel meeting with that woman, I thought it could be her. When I questioned her about Marie, she told me that she took Desta. I asked how she knew that, and she was surprised by my question. She asked how I did.”
Sebastian pales. “She doesn’t simply know about Marie. SheknowsMarie. Or at least someone who is very close to her and the situation.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“Did you ask her about Desta? If she knows about what happened to her?”
I shake my head, my hands going to my hips. “We didn’t get that far. But it seems she has other secrets we don’t yet know.”
“She loves you.”
I scoff out a bitter laugh and roll my eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
He nods, his stand firm. “It matters.”
I shift my weight and clench my shirt under my folded armsso I don’t pummel my fist through the window behind me. “It’s not as though I can marry her. She doesn’t exist. She’s Samil’s half-sister. She’s a goddamn assassin. I’d never be able to trust her, and frankly, she can say she loves me all she likes, but all of her possessions were in her backpack. She wasn’t coming back.”
There’s nothing left for us.
I’m glad she was leaving. I never would have had the strength to let her go. I would have fought heaven and hell to keep her. Chased her to the ends of the earth. Even now, the urge is compelling. But if I had come home and found her gone…
“She wants us to save this thirteen-year-old girl? How fucking sick is the Batorini family that both she and this girl don’t have last names or identities, and they not only beat young girls but also plan to kill them?”
“I think we already know the answer to that. You have scars from that family under your shirt.”
He nods, running a hand over the top of his head to the back of his neck. “I think Marcella would have killed the people who want to kill me, and after, we never would have seen her again.”
