One of the guards immediately bowed and opened the door when he spotted her. Cas had asked for her to attend a quick, informal meeting, so he must have given them instructions to let her in. She smiled at them and stepped inside.
Cas looked up from his desk, his eyes lighting up when he spotted her. He stood and edged around the corner of his desk, extending a hand to her. She took it, tilting her head up to kiss him quickly.
“I heard you had some trouble at the stables this morning,” he said, his brow furrowed.
“We did, but it worked out. Mateo took me to meet some of the guards.”
He looked at her in surprise. “He did?”
“We’re all on edge. He thought it would help if we talked to each other. He introduced me to all the guards on duty at the Weakling shed.” She smiled at him.
His lips turned up, and he kissed her again, wrapping an arm around her waist. He pulled away sooner than she was expecting, glancing at the clock on the wall.
“We have a few minutes until everyone else arrives,” he said. “Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure.” She followed him to the chairs by the window and settled down across from him. He reached for her hand, his eyes on their fingers as they intertwined. His expression had turned serious.
“Jovita is probably dead, isn’t she?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. She was alive the last time I saw her, but I can’t imagine she still is. Olivia isn’t good at keeping humans alive.” She said the last sentence apologetically.
“I considered killing her a few weeks ago. I had soldiers following her. They could have gotten to her. It seemed like a pretty good option, considering I failed in killing her at the fortress.”
“I thought you decided not to kill her, not that you failed.”
“I didn’t so much decide not to as . . . chicken out,” he said.
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“It felt like a bad thing. After Jovita left here and started gathering people to fight against me, it felt like I was an idiot.” He let go of her hand and sat back in his chair. “This is going to sound terrible.”
“I’ve said plenty of terrible things to you.”
He laughed suddenly, some of the weight leaving his expression. “Like what?”
“I think I once told you that I didn’t regret killing anyone, that they had it coming.”
“You did say that, didn’t you?”
“It was a lie.”
“I know.”
She smiled at him. “What’s the terrible thing?”
“I sort of understand my father. And Olivia. Why they chose to just kill instead of negotiating. It’s easier, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She took in a ragged breath. Just the mention of Olivia’s name made her want to curl into a ball and cry. And then flee the castle to search for her.
“It was hard to shake the feeling that I should just have Jovita killed. The law was even on my side.”
“The law was on your father’s side as well, when he killed the Ruined. It is technically still Lera law that all Ruined have to be exterminated, right?”
Cas nodded solemnly.
“Then clearly you can’t always rely on your old laws. They might be wrong. They might need to be changed.”
“I didn’t do it, obviously,” Cas said. “I hesitated until it was too late, and she’d partnered with Olso and Vallos.”
“You shouldn’t consider your hesitance to kill people a weakness, Cas. When I came here, after I killed Mary, I was horrified to realize I’d become like the king by killing Mary. Olivia has certainly become everything she claims to hate.” She swallowed hard. “And I don’t want to do that. I imagine you don’t, either.”
He shook his head. “No. But I was a little surprised by how I felt, after everything settled down and we got word of Jovita still trying to take the throne. I felt weak, like I had never really punished her for convincing everyone I’d lost my mind and poisoning me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to show her that I had the power now.”
“I know a little bit about that feeling.”
“I know you do.” He studied her. “I empathized with you before, but I think it was the first time I really understood you. Once I had somewhere to direct my anger, I wanted to embrace it. It felt better to embrace it.”
“Only at first.”
“What if I’d been horrible?” he asked. “If you’d come here as Mary and discovered I was just like my father, what would you have done?”
She started to reach for the necklace that no longer hung around her neck. It was upstairs, buried in the bottom of a bag. She dropped her hand into her lap. “I think I would have done it.”
“What is it? You never told me the details of the plan, the way it was supposed to go.”
“Are you sure you want to hear?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated for a moment, but she knew that at this point, there was nothing she could say that was going to scare him. He knew everything she’d done, and he didn’t judge her for it.
“It was flexible, because we knew we’d have to work around guards and take opportunities as they came up. Ideally, we wanted to kill all or most of the royal family right as Olso was attacking. It would have thrown the castle into total disarray at the exact right moment. I would have killed you in your bed. I wouldn’t have needed to talk to you first, to explain. I would have been fine killing you quickly.”
He actually looked a little amused by that, and she went on.
“Same with Jovita. I would have tried to sneak up on her in some way. I might have asked Aren to take care of her—he was assigned to protect her a couple of times while we were here. Same with the queen. It would have been Aren, or maybe Iria and the other warriors. The king would have been last, and he would have been mine. I wanted to talk to him first, to tell him who I was.” She would not have been kind, or quick, but she didn’t think it was right to say that to Cas. He probably knew anyway.
“And do you think it would have made you feel better?” he asked. “If we were all just as horrible as you imagined, and you killed us like that?”
“At first,” she said. “I think that night, when you all died and Olso claimed the castle, would have felt like a victory. The feeling probably would have lasted through saving Olivia, and as we traveled back to Ruina. But eventually, I would have had the same realization. That by using the king’s violent tactics, I’d become exactly like him. He killed because he was scared. I killed in revenge. Different reasons, but they have the same ending. I like to think of your father as pure evil, but do you really think he felt entirely comfortable with what he’d done?”
Cas shook his head. “No. I think he became even more stubborn because it was too terrifying to consider that he’d made a mistake.”
“It’s easier not to think about it. To just make the decision and stick with it, no matter who you meet, what new things you learn.” She said her next words gently. “Do you think you got so mad at Jovita because you weren’t allowed to get mad at me?”
His eyes quickly shifted to hers. “I’m allowed to be mad at you. I was mad at you. You remember.”