KINGSLAYER

♕ 6 | 3 ♕

"I was a child. You were a fully-grown man. Do not tell me it was the same."

"It was not," he agreed in a clipped tone. "It certainly was not. But once I was gone, you became the man of the house. Your mother could barely even walk without her cane. And your sisters were ages two and four. You were the only capable one of keeping them physically safe." Over the rim of his glass, he leveled me a look. "I taught you that there is safety in being a man. The soldiers did not see women as the same. I feared they would be violated. You, even as a young boy, were their only hope once I failed them."

I could not find the courage to tell him what he feared for my mother and sisters had happened to me instead.

"Are you suggesting what happened to them was my fault?" My lips barely moved.

"Of course not. I only wish I was there instead of you, for I still don't know how it all happened."

My thoughts turned to mush and I barely heard what he was saying. He still thought I was unfit, even after all this time. I still wasn't enough.

"I wish you were there too," I said, the words slipping over like magma from a volcano. "Then you'd be in the ground with them."

I thought the pain in his eyes would give me wild satisfaction, but he simply took another sip of his drink. There was no anger in his voice when he addressed me once more. Only pity. "Leave this city, Alexander. And do not let your tendency to destroy yourself ruin anyone else."

I was already turning away to leave him behind in his drunken lament. Let him gamble his way to death, for all I cared.

It was easier than imagining the empty space in my life where my mother should have been. It was easier than forever questioning how they'd died, whether it was quick and painless. Or a long and agonizing death I could have saved them from. My own words haunted me. Maggot-infested corpses rotting away somewhere in the ground. I was going to be sick.

I was supposed to destroy myself so they they could live.

I was not even startled to see Jaylah striding into the Azuliné Moriare when I left my stepfather. "I knew you would leave to come here," was all she said, her brown eyes that were usually so sharp now simmering with something more tentative.

I brushed past her. My head was pounding. "We'll find a ship today so that I can be rid of him and you and everything else. I'm done with this bullshit."

For once, I hoped her rage would arise and she would slap me or stab me so that I could focus on the physical pain. Even just her raising her voice to rebuke me might be enough. But she only nodded. "We will find a ship today and be on the journey to Oceana by tomorrow."

Her passive response only stoked the boiling vat of fury within me. Why couldn't she just disagree with me? Why couldn't she have left me alone last night? That would have hurt less.

We were walking back through the gambling tables and the smiling people when there was a shrill scream somewhere near the entrance. The shriek had no sooner rang out than the behemoth of a crystal chandelier was dropped from the ceiling with a bang.

People scattered in all different directions in the few seconds before the chandelier shattered against the ground. Two full gambling tables were crushed. Sprayed glass cut into my arms through my clothes even as I turned to brace myself. Beside me, Jaylah rushed to protect the locket.

I spun toward the entrance, where the same assassin from the day at the bridge blocked the doorway with his Pitviper in hand. His shadowed gaze connected with mine and I knew that falling chandelier had been meant for me.