Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (96)
“Yet I didn’t mean to. It’s all a strange fog. One second I was staring at her with so much anger, it burned as hot as the sun, and the next...” He groaned. “She was limp in my arms, the dagger in her chest. The pain,” he rasped, his hands unfolding from his lap for one to splay over his chest. “It was so acute that I burned alive for years, wishing I had turned that blade on myself instead.” He thumped his chest. “I still feel it even now, though there is nothing in here but scorched earth.”
I didn’t try to fill the somber quiet.
I sat with the destruction Molkan had depicted and rose only when he did. We walked in silence along the line of maple trees toward the eastern grounds.
When he finally spoke again, his voice broke. “Lilitha just...” He coughed a little. “Perhaps she didn’t think I had it in me, for to lose a mate is unthinkable, but to kill your own...”
Fume and Florian’s conversation returned to me then.
Difficult, Florian had said, as though the word barely scraped the surface of accuracy. Perhaps that was why Florian had stalled in his vengeance against Molkan, and I still breathed.
Perhaps I was still foolish enough to want to believe that.
“She threatened my wife—and consequently you. I did what I had to, though it killed half of my soul, and she didn’t fight me,” Molkan said, as if angered that Lilitha hadn’t. “She just let me sink that blade into her beautiful heart. And if she had known I was capable, then maybe she’d wanted me to end it. The suffering we continuously endured at the hands of a fate meant to be a blessing.” A short and clipped laugh. “Not a fucking curse.”
We traversed a slim pebbled path between hedges, the sun beginning to drop.
“I couldn’t hide it. I didn’t want to. I had her taken home, and then I began to fortify my own to forever trap me with my regret. He came before I’d succeeded, of course. Mere days later, word of Lilitha’s and King Hammond’s passing reached every corner of Folkyn.”
We’d almost circled the entire palace, and though I wished for more shade and water, I wanted to know. I needed to know. So I said nothing and waited for Molkan to give voice to what had transpired next.
“Florian came with his threats and his heartbreak, and he terrified my wife. I didn’t wholly believe him, this pompous prince who only wished to fuck and drink himself stupid, but Corina did. She believed he’d seek vengeance until the day she left me. So much so, she tried to flee—to leave out of concern for your safety. I found her, of course. I vowed to take her fear seriously, and I did. I warded our walls, and I sent you away.”
Molkan’s rough and milder tone returned as he went on. “His sister’s death was my fault, and that of his father too, who’d taken his own life just hours after learning his daughter’s fate—as he’d had even less to live for.” He swore under his breath. “He blamed me, yet Hammond had wanted to leave this world for years. Florian knew that, but they’d once been as close as any father and son could be, so I suppose he could not bear it. Hammond would take Florian everywhere with him. Trained him. Taught him. Made him. Skies, some say he even read to him when Florian was old enough to read on his own.”
That fissure in my heart panged. “Before his mother died?”
“Right. Crystal’s death began the slow erosion of the Hellebore family. A unit that was once the source of envy across the land for the seemingly perfect life Hammond and Crystal had made for themselves.” He hesitated before saying, “Many talk of Lilitha with fascination. We faeries love nothing more than a bloody tragedy. But more quietly, for fear of Florian’s icy wrath, Lilitha is spoken of as the creature who cursed her family—sent by the beast of Nowhere himself.”
I frowned down at the grass, wiping my sweaty palms over my teal-green skirts. Then I carefully asked, “And what do you think?”
As though shocked I’d asked, his thick brows rose and he gave me a small smile. “I think none of us were ready for Lilitha, but should I ever meet her again”—determination gritted his voice as he looked toward the sky—“I will be.”
The terrace neared, and I thought our conversation might be done for the day.
Then the king said, “Florian vowed to take everything from me. When you were born, your mother’s dying wish was for you to have no part in his revenge. After she was gone, I was lost to grief, to the realization I’d lost not only my mate but also my wife, so I told my most trusted to decide what to do with you. Admittedly, I hadn’t cared. I spent days, months—years, really—wondering if that was how Hammond had felt, but I refused to leave my people. I refused to give in to the longing to end it all, for I was the one who’d caused it. I would endure my penance.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when he finally gave voice to dumping me in the middle lands, but such cruel honesty wasn’t it.
“It would be years before I even cared about Florian’s threats, and by the time I did, he’d already started toying with me. It started small. Most of it insignificant enough to arouse mere annoyance. Prized mares were found missing from the stables, our boats overturned along our rivers.” A flick of his hand. “That type of thing. But I should have known...” He shook his head. “He was simply flexing his muscles.”
“Now, he has taken our people, killed and kept them chained to him in surrender. He has burned and butchered factories and greenhouses and fields of staples. Coin, finery, livelihoods—he takes it all. Our ability to trade with the other kingdoms. Even our jewel troves hidden within tunnels beneath our city walls were stolen a decade ago.”