by Mira Zamin
I stormed into my rooms and found Gwydion lounging in a chair, one booted leg swung up on the chair’s arm, book in hand. His nonchalance, from which I had drawn heart the week before, infuriated me. I wanted to tear the book from his hands and hurl it out the window. Locking the door firmly behind me, I hissed, “You beast!”
He closed the book patiently and looked up at me with the utmost innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You poisoned the Queen!” I breathed, my voice almost too soft to be heard, but the words shook.
“Oh that. Yes,” he answered, clearly bored.
A shrill sound clawed from my throat.
“Figured it out have you?”
“Liem and Kershid announced it to the whole Assembly that the Queen had been murdered. I...think many suspect Quenela.”
Gwydion smiled with satisfaction. “Good. She seems like the type, so haughty and unlikeable.” He grew grim. “And she did attempt to murder you—and me—and she did kill that footman. If she suffers for the Queen’s murder, so be it. She walked away clean from attempting yours.”
I keened again.
“I do not know why you are so put out,” he drawled. “It was the charitable thing to do. The poor Queen was so weak and miserable in her last weeks.”
And then: “Don’t be a fool. I did this for you.”
I looked up, aghast. Was the Queen’s death my fault then, just as the curse had been? Don’t be a fool, a voice hissed in the back of my mind. Don’t for a moment think this isn’t for his own sake, for the power to pull your strings if you become queen.
I began pacing the room, heaving and wringing my hands. “What will I do? What will I do?” Gwydion was right: it would be expedient to let Quenela be punished for the Queen’s murder—it was not as if she were innocent. But it went against my very fibre, that concept of right and wrong my mother, father, and Beya had worked so hard to instill in me. When a new idea struck, a means to rectify the situation, my knees gave way and I melted into a puddle on the floor. I buried my face in my skirts.
I could hear the pitying disdain in his voice. “There is nothing for you to do, of course. Let them think it was Quenela. In fact, I will ensure that by tomorrow morning, everyone will think it was Quenela. Think: your main rival removed.”
“Whatever else she may have done, I will not let her die for your sin,” I cried, raising my head.
“I thought you hated her?” he asked, kneeling beside me.
“That is beside the point!” But my heart was no longer in it. I could only think of this man, who had fathered my child, who had saved my life, and yes, who had struck me and manipulated me to an inch of it. I could set all this right, but at what cost?
“If you worry that this will come back to you, do not trouble yourself.” He patted my shoulder kindly with his good arm. “I will take care of it all.” I cringed away from him.
“If you cut that servant’s throat to conceal your own misdeed, I will turn you in myself.”
He seemed unfazed, so secure in his hold over me. “He is meant to die anyways. Besides, I would not be cutting his throat myself. Someone else would be doing it for me.”
“Another person who could be induced to reveal your secrets?”A shiver rippled through me. This may be the last time I will see him free. Something about his face, perhaps a passing frailty which I had never seen before, decided the matter for me. I thought of how he had looked after the attempt on my life, bleeding and worried. Something strummed. Roughly, I grasped his golden hair and brought his lips to meet mine.