“You.”
My mind recoils at the way he spits the word, at the bitterness that stains his exhale, and I yank my hand away from his chest, like I’ve been scalded by it. “Me?”
“Yes. You would hate me for it, because for whatever reason, you still care for him.”
“I don’t,” I argue, saying it again when he scoffs at me.
“Oh, really?” he challenges. “Then ask me.”
My mind stumbles, like I’m riding too fast downhill and the speed is getting away from me. “Ask you…？”
“Ask me to kill him for you.”
I blanch, feeling the blood drain from my face. That was the very last thing I expected him to say.
Everything about Slade right now is fierce, unfettered, and completely fae, despite those parts of him hidden from view. “You say the word, and it’s done. You hear me?” His hand lifts, and he snaps his fingers so loud that I flinch. “That quick, Auren. I’d end him in a breath, in a room full of people who’d run screaming, with monarchs who’d band together against me. But if you wanted me to do it, I would. So say it.”
“It’s not just about me,” I try to explain, but he doesn’t even seem to hear me.
Slade looks at me with that crude, horrible challenge in his expression. “Say it!” he shouts, making me flinch.
“I-I can’t.”
A flash of utter disappointment crystallizes in his eyes. And that gesture as sharp as glass cuts me to the bone. It’s a wound much worse than the one I sustained on my cheek.
“Exactly.” He turns and moves away a few steps, and I feel the space between us like a chasm that I have no hope of crossing. “Which is why I refuse to ruin my chances over that worthless fucker,” he hurls out the insult between bitten teeth. “If I killed him—and make no mistake, Auren, I would gladly kill him for you, damn the consequences. But if I did, the truth is right there on your face. You’d resent me for it. Even if you don’t want to admit it. And isn’t that just a fucking cruel twist of it all?”
Tears build up in my eyes with every pent-up word that peels off him, but I don’t let them drop this time. Not even as they burn and puddle on my lids.
He tilts his head in my direction, particles of dust clinging to the air between us like it’s waiting for us to settle. But we don’t settle, that’s the problem. We never do. Every time I think we’re on even footing ready to stand still, one of us takes another step.
“I’m…” My mouth closes. I’m what? Sorry? Am I apologizing that I can’t ask the male in front of me to kill the one I’ve put behind me?
“Is that what you think I should do? Is that what you want?” I ask instead, the question genuine.
He tips his head up and sends a bitter smile to the cobwebbed ceiling. “What I want…” His laughter is soaked in somber asperity, eyes casting for wisdom from a sky that can’t see us. After a pushed breath through his tense chest, he looks at me again. “There’s only one thing that I find I want anymore.”
There’s a churning in my stomach, his declaration twisting me all up so much that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to disentangle myself. Based on the woven look in his grass-bladed eyes, he feels the same.
“I’ll be returning to Fourth Kingdom the day after the ball,” he says suddenly, and something painful tears through my chest. “I’ve been away too long as it is, and I’m needed there.”
You’re needed here too.
He looks at me, and there’s a wait there, an opportunity for me to ask him to stay, and it terrifies me.
Like a confession of pilfered spoils, I hear myself say, “I’m trying to leave him.”
Slade’s attention sharpens, my eyes dropping from the piercing gaze that lands against my face. “I’m trying to just…leave.” My words tear off, like shorn parchment right in the middle of an apology letter. “To disappear.”
That stillness in him has returned, the unmoving mountain standing solid against fits of wind.
I don’t know why I told him, and yet, he feels like the only one I should tell.
Because despite my determination to get away, Slade’s right. It would be so easy to end Midas, to turn him into the gold he covets so much. To bring an end to that tyranny. It would be even easier for Slade to rot him inside out.
But…I can’t.
And great Divine, doesn’t that just leave me conflicted. I hate myself, I’m proud of myself, I’m right, I’m wrong, this is best, this is worst.