Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(38)
Regan had never seen a kirin, but from what she remembered, they were shaped much like unicorns, with hooves and horns and long, equine muzzles instead of flat human faces. The voice had none of the faint lisp she was accustomed to hearing from equine lips. The voice was low and tired and ancient, and entirely indistinguishable from a human’s. Cautiously, Regan started walking again, suddenly deeply glad for the bow in her hand.
A door stood open a little distance down the hall. Regan peeked around the frame, into the room on the other side.
It was large and square, with tapestries on the walls and carpets on the floor. A fire crackled in the grate, struggling and failing to warm the space. At the center of the room, positioned well away from the walls, was a tall canopy bed, mounded with pillows, and at the center of the bed was a human man, his hair grown long and wispy to match his unkempt beard and mustache. His body was so slight and wasted that it barely made a shape beneath the covers, which might as well have been tucked down flat.
He met Regan’s eyes, lifting his head the barest fraction of an inch in the process, and smiled.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
16
THE DANGER OF DESTINY
“I EXPECTED YOU YEARS ago,” the man continued. “I thought you’d do what I did, and make the first person you met bring you straight here, assuming you could see them as a person. I thought you’d be eager to get down to the business of heroism and fulfilling your destiny. Not to run off to the woods and live like an animal. I suppose I shouldn’t make assumptions.” He coughed, covering his mouth with his hand; when he pulled it away, his palm was red with blood. “But you’re here now, come to save the world the same way I did.”
Regan stared at him. “I thought you disappeared after you helped Kagami take the throne,” she said, lips numb.
“Is that what they say? Well, I suppose it’s a better story than ‘I slit a silly little mare’s throat and bled her out in what she thought was going to be her throne room.’” His voice was cold, dispassionate; not cruel. He would have had to care at least a little to be cruel. “I was seventeen years old. I had a lover waiting for me, a farm I was set to take over when my father died, and suddenly, these talking horses were telling me I had to be their savior, even though there wasn’t anything to save them from. Kagami was the one who found me after I tumbled through my door. She said the king had ordered her family’s fields burned when they refused to pay their taxes, and so she thought saving the world might mean overthrowing the king. It was as good an answer as any. She took me here, to the palace, and I learned the king had been dead for decades, and an ancient human woman had been secretly ruling in his place, never showing her face to the representatives of the herds who came to call on her, never stirring from the palace. She was even older then than I am now, if you can believe it.” He coughed again, almost smiling. “I had never seen anyone so old. It seemed impossible that she should be among the living. She had been here since she was a child, speaking to her subjects from behind a curtain, and had been waiting for me for years.”
“You killed her,” whispered Regan.
“Yes, I did,” said the man. “She told me how to operate this palace from the shadows, and I killed her at her request, and then I killed Kagami, before she could go back to her farm and tell the others that their beloved king had been a human woman all along. That was how I saved the world. I took the old woman’s place behind the curtain. They all believe the Queen’s splendor is too glorious for any of her subjects to behold, and they’re happy to obey a voice without a face when it tells them to do things they already believe to be correct.”
Regan blinked, disbelieving. “How did murder save the world?”
“They believe humans are heroes. They believe they’re ruled by one of their own kind. Their world is built on those beliefs. They couldn’t survive learning they were wrong. It would destroy their entire system of governance, such as it is. So I did as she asked, and I freed her from their expectations. Then I put Kagami down like the animal she was, and sat back to wait for my door to return.” His expression darkened. “It didn’t. It left me here, alone, apart from my own people, to grow old and fade away in a world full of beasts, yoked to a throne I couldn’t abandon without revealing what I’d done and destroying the illusion. At first I kept my place because I wanted to keep my word to the woman I had killed, and then I did it because being old and alone in a world of beasts was so much worse than being their queen. So I stopped waiting for the door and started waiting for you, and now here you are, my salvation.”
“I’m not here to save you.” Regan took a step backward. “You tried to have me kidnapped. You hurt my family.”
“You mean the centaurs you’ve been living with? They’re animals, beasts. They don’t feel the way we do. They don’t love the way we do.” He scoffed. “Nothing I did to them had to happen. It was your fault, for not coming to me when you were first called into this world. If you’d been a better hero, none of this suffering would have taken place.”
“And what was I supposed to do when I got here, kill you? I was a child. I still am.” Regan shook her head in disgust. “I’m not killing anyone. I don’t want to be a hero. I was willing to save the Hooflands from a wicked queen if there was no one else to do the job, but I’m not willing to kill a man, not even a bad man. Destiny doesn’t exist. You got it wrong. Everyone here got it wrong.”