A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(72)

“I’m sorry,” Kane said, eyes almost wounded. “About what this war has done to your home and to your family. I swear I will find them for you.” I nodded. I believed him. “And one day, when Lazarus is defeated, I will rebuild all the cities and villages like yours that fell. Restore homes, heal the injured.”

“I can help you with that last one,” I said, before realizing how pathetic it sounded. Practically begging him to keep me around. Take me with him.

His eyes lit with a new expression. Something I couldn’t quite place, there and gone like a flash of lightning. “Is healing your favorite thing to do, bird? Or do you do it simply because of your gift?”

“I do love it. Healing people. And I like that I’m good at it. Is that conceited?”

His mouth lifted in a smile. “Of course not.”

“But my favorite thing to do… I love running. If I could, I would run each morning and night. I’d sleep like a baby. I really love flowers, too. I think I could have enjoyed being an herbalist. And Mari’s gotten me quite into reading. I like the love stories and the epic, fantastical tales of pirates and conquerors.”

He huffed in amusement.

“You don’t like to read?” I asked.

“I do.” He tucked a rogue brown strand that had cluttered my face behind my ear, and my whole body lit up like a matchstick. I willed myself to be calm, but my toes twitched, and I was sure that he saw. “But as you said tonight, I am old and dull. I like political tomes.”

I mocked dying slowly from boredom, which earned me a gorgeous grin.

“Fine. What else do you love?” I needed more. I loved learning about the non-wicked-king side of Kane. I pictured him in another life, buttering cloverbread and reading a large, boring book in a little cottage by the sea, while babies slept in the next room. Whether or not I was somewhere else in that cottage, taking a soapy bath, I tried not to dwell on.

“Well, you know I loved playing the lute growing up. I like to play chess with Griffin. He’s the only one who can beat me.”

“Such a humble king,” I teased.

“Truth is, I don’t do too much that I enjoy anymore.”

The thought made me unbearably sad. “Well, we’ll have to change that. When this war is over, and you can spare a moment from your kingly duties, I will take you to my favorite grassy hill above my home in Amber. There is nothing a mug of cider and a sunset over the town square in Abbington can’t cure.”

“You’re very good at that.”

“Good at what?”

“Relentless positivity.”

Humor twitched at my lips. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“There is nothing more valuable in a world as dark as ours.”

We were both on our sides now, staring at one another. There was far too little space between us and also, somehow, too much. It was torturous. I searched my brain for another question to break the tension.

“The last time you surprised me like this I still thought you were a prisoner. Why did you come visit me that night?”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time we met, you were in the dungeons to manipulate someone else for information. The second, you needed medical assistance. I’m the only healer, you thought I might not help you if you admitted you were the king—fine, makes sense. But the third time you were just outside my cell, waiting for me. You told me you were seeing if I was still planning to run. But I didn’t believe you then and I sure don’t now. So, why?”

He ran a hand over his jaw in thought. “What I told you that night was true. I had been dealing with something unpleasant. Afterward, I think I just wanted to… be near you.”

My pulse quickened and I waited for more. More, more, more.

“Not as the king I knew you hated. But as a man you had come to like.” He shook his head and sighed. “And a man I had come to like.”

So I had been right, after the day we raced to the pond.

The monster act was a purposeful one, to be to others what he felt inside. I chose my next words carefully. “You said a while ago that maybe I didn’t think so highly of myself.” Heat burned my cheeks at the admission, but I pressed on. “That I had thought my life was worth less than my brother’s. I realized not too long after how little I had stood up for myself or thought of myself, for so many years. Is it possible you suffer from a similar affliction?”

Kane wove my hand in his. His palm was rough and warm and dwarfed mine twice over.

“Such a perceptive bird. I fear my condition is far worse. You have been surrounded by people who have told you such things. Dim-witted fools, all of them.”

He was warring with whatever he wanted to say next, I could tell. I waited patiently.

“I have harmed many people, Arwen. I bring pain wherever I go. I hurt people. Often those I care about most.”

I knew it was true, but it was worse hearing him admit it.

“There is always another day, Kane. A chance to make things right with them.”

“No, there isn’t.”

His grave eyes glinted in the candlelight, and I released a slow breath.

“Isn’t that a little… definitive? Everyone is capable of redemption.”

“They’re dead, Arwen. Because of me.” I started at the harshness of his words. The self-loathing and pain entwined in them—no wonder he thought he was a monster. “There is no redemption,” he continued, pulling his hand from mine. “Only revenge.”