“You know he wouldn’t approve. Not even a little bit.”
She sits straight and looks me in the eyes. “Who cares.”
“What?”
“Who cares what he says. If it makes you happy…”
“He’s the king…” The truth is, I don’t care. But I’m curious to see how far I can push Meela down this path.
“So what,” she says, uncharacteristically soft, staring off at nothing in particular.
“You think I should disobey him? Or go behind his back?” It doesn’t actually matter, since Daegan wants nothing to do with me in that way anyway. My chest hurts at the thought.
“Either. Both. I don’t care.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t give a shit about anything,” she says, facing me again. “You know that. None of it matters. Our cushy kingdom, how we just sit here and do nothing every day and let all the other regions make everything for us,while we give them almost nothing in return, even kill them off for no good reason…”
“What?” I perk up. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“No, that’s not nothing.”
She faces me with a serious, yet reluctant look. “You remember that time a few years back when the king sent my father away for a temporary assignment in Arryza, and I went with him?”
“Of course.” She was gone almost a whole year, and then she came back grumpier than ever, like she wanted nothing less than to be back here. She never wanted to talk about it much, and I tried not to take any of it personally. Arryzan is a region in the northeast.
“I fell in love.”
My jaw hangs open. Meela? In love? And I had no idea? We really are bad at sharing personal things.
“With an Arryzan?” I whisper. The Arryzans are said to be beautiful. With pointed ears and comparable statures, they’re similar to elves in appearance, but the difference is they are winged magical species who possess only healing magic. And their wings are hard to miss, as they’re large and golden. I’ve only met a few. They too tend to keep to their region, as do many people since the curse. Their population is small, though their lifespans can last a thousand years. They don’t reproduce easily. And like the dragons, they can’t fly since the curse.
“Zave Leander.” She says the name like it pains her. “The love of my life.”
Not a hint of joking to be seen on her face.
“What happened?” I whisper, afraid of the answer.
“Well, as you know. Most elves don’t take too kindly to us mixing with other species. They’re below us. How can we dare mix our precious, elite blood with a lesser kind’s?” She takes a sip of her drink. “That includes my own father.”
I hug my arms tight around myself, taking a seat across from her.
She looks at me, not a tear in her eyes. Only pure, wrathful anger. “We weren’t there to make peace. Your father is very sneaky with what he does, how he still keeps these other regions in line. He keeps up the façade that we sit around and do nothing, but that’s not why we were there. We were there pretending to offer peace and better conditions for them, but really we were there to spy and gain intel, and as soon as we left, an army was sent in to keep them contained, make them fall in line. People were protesting, you see.”
“That can’t be—”
“It’s happening. More than you know.”
I don’t argue with her. I believe every word she says.
“And Zave?” I ask, my voice shaking.
She looks into my eyes. “He was hanged.”
I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth as I shake my head. I don’t want to ask, but I’ll assume they did something horrible to him after, since Arryzans possess healing magic and they’d need to be sure he was really dead.
