We’d reached a large cropping of rocks at the rear of the palace, damp from the water I could hear trickling between the gaps from deep below. The springs, I surmised.
Walking on, we crossed the grass to the shade of swaying leaves from a thick line of maple trees.
“Lilitha left, but she came back. Time and again, she returned and waited right there.” He gestured past the row of stone houses, likely for the palace staff, to a lone wooden corpse of a tool shed. “Despite telling her not to, she came at least once a week for two moons until Florian caught wind of what she was doing.”
He laughed low. “I should have been grateful for his intervening, but it was too late. I’d given in so many times by that point that I was almost as resentful of your impending arrival as Lilitha was.”
Before the sting of his words could settle deep, he sighed. “The following week, I received a sparrow instead of a visit from my mate, Lilitha’s tears smudging the parchment and ink. She’d been caught and forbidden to see me again. But when Lilitha disobeyed Florian not two weeks later, he arrived minutes after his sister, and he knew.”
“That you were mates.”
“Yes,” he said. “We were friends, allies, but of course, I ruined that when he first caught me with Lilitha when she was but seventeen years. Though finding out why I’d been with her, and that we were mates, did not redeem me in any way. He knew Corina was pregnant, and he knew we were forever bound by marriage.”
“What did he do?” For he’d certainly done something.
“Florian took her home and returned that night to warn me that if I broke his sister’s heart any more than I already had, then he would marry her off to one of his most trusted warrior friends—someone who would not take kindly to another sampling what wasn’t his to claim.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if that particular warrior friend had been Fume.
“I’d never been so angry in my entire life, but he left without another word or warning. Florian knew how much I cared for Lilitha, despite my failed attempts not to. And he knew to shackle his sister to anyone she hadn’t chosen herself would slowly kill her.”
“So you let her go.”
“We had what I’d thought would be a final meeting, and I told Lilitha it was finished. That it had to be. I told her of Florian’s threat. She called me a liar, claiming her brother would never dare do such a thing to her. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made,” he said roughly. “Like plunging a knife into your own chest and watching your blood stray from you, but it had to be done, for her sake and mine.”
Birdsong filled the following silence.
Just as I began to assume we would turn back, Molkan lowered to the grass beneath the maple trees. He patted it, and I sat a few feet beside him and pulled my skirts over my bent knees.
“I was planning a small trip,” he continued, so soft, I almost missed it beneath the volume of birds above. “Your mother wanted to sail down the Heartline River one last time before your arrival, and I was willing to do just about anything to see her happy, for doing so made some of the longing and misery within me lessen enough to remember what was right.”
Molkan folded his legs beneath him. His eyes remained cast upon the lake and the stone houses surrounding it.
“Lilitha had sent an urgent request to meet, and so we did by the docks during my inspection of the boat.” He shook his head with a grimace. “I had to know she was okay, and it would seem she wasn’t. An arrangement was being made. She would marry one of Florian’s friends after all.” Contempt filled and lowered his words. “The mere thought made me sick. I couldn’t have her, but she was still mine.”
I ceased stroking the velvet blades of grass.
“I told her so, and she told me it was my fault. That I was a coward for not killing my own wife.” His laughter lacked humor. “For not choosing her. She pointed her dagger at my chin, saying I was a stain on her soul. A mistake made by the goddess, and that she would see to Corina’s end herself regardless of the babe in her womb.”
“My fear and fury were such that dirt crumbled beneath her, and my mate stumbled to her knees. I snatched the blade she’d dropped and gazed down at the wild creature who’d made it her mission to ruin my life so thoroughly.”
I knew how this ended. He’d killed her.
My heart still raced. My eyes stuck to Molkan’s profile, of which was half hidden by sunshine and shade.
“I knew it would destroy me, but it had to stop.” He pressed his lips together momentarily, then parted them with a harsh breath. “At that moment, I knew within my soul that it would never fucking stop. That I would want Lilitha forever, but I could never truly have her.”
So he’d made sure no one would.
Despite knowing what had happened, horror still gripped my chest.
“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.”