Gathering Darkness (Falling Kingdoms 3)

Cleo stood up and sat right next to Magnus. The gesture surprised him, but he didn’t let it show.

“I find you . . . deeply confusing,” Cleo said. “More so with every day that passes.”

“Some girls are easily confused.”

“Time and time again you prove yourself to be vile and disgusting and hateful.”

This coaxed a fresh laugh from him. They’d finally returned to more familiar ground. “Your opinion is irrelevant to me, princess.”

“You are all of those things.” She nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “But the more I think about you, the more of an enigma you become to me. Yesterday was only another example. Before that, you could have exposed me to your father as an eavesdropper, but you didn’t. You could have let that boy stab me in Limeros, but you stopped him. You defended me when Aron exposed my loss of chastity. The king would have cast me out otherwise. And you didn’t tell your father about the bridal dagger Prince Ashur gave me.”

She made it sound as though he’d done these things deliberately, to help her. “You’re imagining kindnesses that were anything but.”

“You’re the one who chooses to call them kindnesses. Are you sure that’s not what they were?” She searched his face, making him feel naked and exposed, as if the masks he’d spent so many years building up were crumbling down all around him like sand castles in the wind.

“You know nothing about me,” he growled. For the first time tonight, he cursed the fact that he’d drank to excess. He needed his mind to be clear in the face of his enemies.

Why had he bothered to come inside? Was it simply to exert his force of will upon this girl? To remind her that she had no power? To bully her in an attempt to regain his strength?

It had only made him weaker than he’d been before.

“All I can do anymore is think,” Cleo said after a long silence. “All day, all night. I think about everything that’s happened and I replay it over and over in my mind. And do you know what I think, Magnus?”

Why did he remain here and continue to listen to her? He needed to leave this place. “I don’t care what you think.”

“I think that you hate your father. You hate him almost as much as I do.”

It took him a moment to realize he’d stopped breathing. “And what difference would it make if you’re right?” he finally managed.

“All the difference in the world.”

She was brave this evening, saying things to his drunken self that she’d never say to the sober one.

He hadn’t given her a direct answer, but he hadn’t denied it, either.

“You’re not like the king,” she said softly, when he said nothing in reply.

He turned away. “You’re wrong. I’m exactly like the king. I aspire to be as great a man as my father. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She touched his arm and he flinched. “You aspire to be like a man who would slice open a child’s cheek as punishment for some meaningless offense?”

He glared at her as he brought up his hand and touched his scar. He never should have told her that bit about his past. He had exposed yet another weakness, and now she was using it against him. “What do you think you’re doing here, saying these things to me?”

She bit her bottom lip before replying. “I’m simply trying to have a civil conversation with you.”

Enough of this. “Then this civil conversation has happily reached its end.” Magnus stood up and began walking away. But suddenly she was up and standing there, blocking his path.

“I’m not done,” she said.

“Oh, you’re done.”

“No. I’m not.”

He was through with this. He grabbed her arms, turned her around, and pushed her backward until she touched the mosaic. The goddess rose up above her, a fearsome, omnipotent guardian watching over the Auranian princess.

“There is no goodness inside of me, princess, so please don’t waste time fantasizing that there might be.”

“Lucia is your sister and she’s not bad,” Cleo said.