Alvina is still fighting to get her throne back. To save her brother, her country and her own sanity. They only need one leg-up and then the war will be over.
Quinn is struggling to stay in the present. Stay with his family and not give into the gr...
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"Do you ever think about what you did?" I asked and shoved my hands in the thick coat pockets.
Dreki scuffed at me from his position on the floor, leaning against the icy wall behind him.
"Do you regret anything?" I tried.
"No," he said very calmly. "Regrets are for the weak. I regret nothing."
"So, after all these years here, you still don't think you did anything wrong?"
"Would you? If you had been in my position. Living under an oppressive monarchy that refused to listen. Who had disgraced my tribe and continuously made us all out to be pariahs. Do you regret what you've done?"
"I regret killing Aki Helsingfoss," I said calmly.
"So, you did kill him," he chuckled and tipped his head to the side. "He beat you though. Do you truly regret killing him?"
"Yes. I wished there had been another way. Killing isn't... Pleasant."
He chuckled. "And that will be your downfall. Saying killing is unpleasant. It's weak, Quinn. And you're the king. A weak king."
"It's not weak to say killing is unpleasant. Killing is quite easy. It doesn't take much to take someone's life. All I had to do was lift a candlestick and let gravity do the rest. All you had to do was order someone to do it for you. You can use very few muscles to pull a trigger. If you close your eyes, you won't even have to watch them die. Killing is easy. Living with it after is hard when you're a regular human being."
"Are you implying I'm not?"
"Unfortunately, you're entirely regular. You're not a monster. You're a human with human emotions and human motivations. What drove you to what you did was humanity in its ugliest form, but it was still humanity."
"Did Islo teach you that?" he smirked at me.
He'd always use our first names as if we were all old friends. He knew it irked me. I twitched every time, despite how much I tried to not react at all. I guessed he had very few joys but disrespecting me even now was one of them. I'd visit him once a year. When I toured the country to hear from the people. I wasn't even sure why I bothered anymore with him. Maybe to see if something would change. Maybe it was to face one of the people who had been the cause of so much trauma. To remind myself he was just a human, not a monster.
He was just a human, not a monster.
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