I gripped the handle with both hands, and then I brought it down upon him. The blade was so sharp, it cut through his skin and bone effortlessly. Solaris had gone white, and a ragged groan escaped from his throat. Daroc and Sorin moved in, shoving him into the stone to keep him still as Adrian retrieved the cauterizing iron. As he pressed the flat, hot end to Solaris’s wrist, his violent screams filled the chamber.
Twenty
Isolde
Violeta was carried to the pyre in the courtyard, draped in her black shroud.
While I had felt some element of sympathy for Solaris earlier, it had dried up the moment I saw her again. I had no doubt that his arrival had inspired the people of Gal to attack us, and because of his carelessness, we were left with the fallout, with the grief, with the guilt.
Her family gathered opposite us, huddled together, sobbing. She’d had a mother, father, two brothers, and one sister. I saw parts of her in each of them. I tried not to stare, but I could not help watching, feeling responsible for every tear they shed.
There were others gathered in the courtyard—servants who had worked with her, villagers who loved her, and those who served closest to us, among them Killian.
We took turns laying flowers around her—lavender, lilies, whatever had yet to die beneath the snow in the garden. I watched closely when it was Killian’s turn. His features were hard, but his eyes were sad, and he lifted his hand, hesitating before he brushed his fingers against her ruined lips. His mouth moved, but I could not hear what he said, and at some point, it felt too intimate to watch.
I looked away until it was my turn. I placed my palm against her forehead. It was soft beneath my touch and bile rose into my throat.
“I am sorry,” I whispered and bent to kiss her, my tears falling onto her face.
I drew back and returned to Adrian’s side, and when they lit the fire, I lifted my hand to Violeta’s necklace, squeezing it hard in my hand until it hurt, grateful now that it was her essence that clung to it because it would feed my vengeance against Ravena.
***
I sat with Ana for a long time after Violeta’s funeral. She lay in her bed, in her small room, unmoving. I watched her stomach rise with each breath, fearful that at any moment, it would stop.
She was too still.
At some point, Adrian joined me, taking a seat on the other side of Ana’s bed. He looked exhausted and worn; the lines between his eyes were deep and the hollows of his face shadowed. Our earlier conversation weighed upon my mind, and I wanted to ask him about Dis. I was frustrated that she added another complicated element to our lives, and I wanted it to end, but I knew it was not the right time to speak of her.
I focused on Ana instead. I was so tired of crying. My eyes were raw, and my face hurt, but I could not stop, so I let the tears run freely down my face.
“Why won’t she wake?” I asked. “You healed her. Why won’t she wake?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Euric says he has seen this before, and he believes she will come to, though it might be days.”
Euric was the vampire who had bandaged my wound after I was attacked by a child possessed with the crimson mist. He had claimed not to be a healer, leaving the title for witches, though he was skilled in some of the arts.
We were quiet for a long moment, both of us watching Ana.
“Did you know about Dragos’s pleasure house?” I asked.
Adrian kept staring at Ana.
“We all did,” he said. “It was impossible not to know.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?”
“You assume I did nothing?” he asked, looking at me.
I supposed I had. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I likely did not do enough,” he said. “I was focused on killing Dragos. I thought if I succeeded, then every bad thing he’d done would go away. I didn’t realize until after Ana’s…” He paused and cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize how awful it had become until…until then.”
“You planned to kill Dragos? Even before my death?”
“It’s the only reason I joined his guard,” Adrian said. “It was not easy…pretending to be so loyal.”
“What did he do to you?”
Adrian swallowed, and let his eyes fall to his hands, which he had clasped tightly in his lap.
“I blame him for destroying my family. Revekka was once very small, and Dragos wanted more land, more power. He declared war upon three other countries. They were called Bren, Kazan, and Oksana. My father was called upon to fight, and when he returned, he was not the same man. He was angry, and he drank, and that made him violent. One day, he walked into the woods and impaled himself upon his sword. I found him. I was only a boy. After, my mother, too, began drinking, and she whored herself around to sustain it rather than feeding me.”
He paused a moment, letting his hands rest on the arms of his chair, gazing toward the window.
“One day, she didn’t come home. They found her body in the river. I was old enough then to do something. It wasn’t hard to find the man who murdered her. Everyone talked about it because no one cared that she was dead. Except me, though she did nothing to deserve my vengeance, save birth me.
“After I killed the murderer of my mother, I fled Revekka for Keziah. They are a vibrant and warrior-like people. I trained with them and only came to the Red Palace for the King’s Tournament. Dragos did not care that I had murdered, not after seeing my skill in the ring, and he did not know that the only reason I sought to be part of his guard was so that I could kill him.”
“I never knew,” I said. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Once the truth is spoken, it always seems to find its target.” He was quiet for a moment. “Once, though, a long time ago when I thought you and I could have a peaceful life under the mountains, my vengeance did not matter so much.”
I recalled our conversation in the woods near the cabin where we’d spent our final night, when we had discussed a future that was so far out of reach, it would now only ever be a nightmare.
“Perhaps our mistake was ever thinking we were meant for such things,” I said.
But Adrian shook his head. “I will never forget the times I spent with you, dreaming. Those are my brightest memories.”
It was late when we left Ana’s bedside. Usually, after executions and funerals, the palace was alive with celebration, but not this night. Tonight, the halls were quiet, a solemn memorial for Violeta.
I worried about returning to our room, thinking of how we’d left it this morning. It felt almost wrong to think about sex in this moment, but it was how I took control of my world, and no matter how dark or terrifying, I needed to reclaim it. “I need you, Adrian,” I said, looking up at him.
He slowed and met my gaze. “I am here.”
“I mean that I want you to make love to me.”
His gaze softened. “Isolde, I—”
“Tell me you do not want me,” I said, stepping closer, though we remained in the hallway, and nowhere near our room or bed. I placed my hands flat on his chest, smoothing them down his stomach, dropping one to touch his arousal. He took a breath, releasing it slow between his lips.
“It is never that,” he said. “You know it is not that.”