Page 21 of The Hollow King

I waited, but he did not speak again. The silence stretched between us and that did not bode well for me. I gulped before I gathered the courage to speak.

“You will be rid of me tonight,” I whispered, lowering my gaze back to his feet.

I said it plainly, the way one might remark on the weather. There was nothing left in me to dress the words up as anything other than what they were.

He crouched down slowly until our eyes met. Up close, I could see that something in his face had changed since I had last dared to look at it directly. The black of his eyes, which I had only ever known as empty, now held something that looked unbearably like grief.

“I deeply regret my actions towards you. I know that what I did was unforgivable,” he said as I stared into the obsidian pools that shone brighter than I had ever seen.

I did not know what to do with an apology. No one had ever offered me one before, not even the husband who had carved his mark into my face. I sat with the strangeness of it, unsure whether I was meant to feel forgiveness, or simply grateful that the cruelty, at least for this moment, appeared to have stopped.

“I grant your freedom. You may return south, back to Dornovia,” he said, but his voice cracked when he named my province.

That was when I saw a teardrop form and watched as it rolled into the thick whiskers on his cheek. I had imagined many things this beast might do to me before the month’s end. I had never once imagined I would watch him weep.

Stunned, I was unable to gather my thoughts until one question lingered.

“How do you know where I come from?”

His eyes closed and the thick eyebrows furrowed together. He cleared his throat.

“My Queen, Morana, came from Dornovia. Her house was Borja.”

The name meant nothing to me, and everything, all at once. My own house was Borja. My grandfather had told me once, long ago, of a great ancestor who had married a king and met a terrible end, her name lost somewhere between generations who had stopped speaking of her. I had never thought to ask why. I had never thought there was a why worth asking. She was remembered for her ties to royalty and her death.

Now I understood that I was looking at the answer, kneeling before me with tears in his beard, three hundred years too late to matter and somehow mattering more than anything ever had.

“Tell me about her.”

He slowly raised his head. His eyes were now open. There was emotion. The first sign of humanity beneath the monster's guise.

Shock. Confusion. Relief?

“You do not wish to leave?”

I sighed, looking away, toying with the covers.

“My home is no longer mine.”

“Oh,” he said and settled on the ground, crossing his legs beneath him.

Silence came again. He looked as if he were calculating a difficult equation.

“I could purchase some land in your name.”

“You do not know the laws of this land. Women cannot own such things,” I scoffed.

He scratched his cheek.

“You can live in the castle. No one will—harm you.”

My heart beat faster. I could feel it beneath my chest. Each beat.

Was it fear or something else?

“And you will never use that balm on me?” I asked before pursing my lips at the memories that wretched concoction brought.

His back straightened and he held his head high, placing his hand over his heart.