Gathering Darkness (Falling Kingdoms #3)(59)

“I see you’re attempting to change the subject.”

“I find that those who drink to excess wish to forget their troubles.”

“Oh, really? Is that what you do?”

She paused, seemingly undeterred by the jab. “I drink far less than I used to. I found it never led me to the places I wanted to be.”

“Oh, that’s right. It led you into Aron Lagaris’s bed, isn’t that right?”

Her expression soured. “How kind of you to remind me.”

“But alas, you won’t be finding yourself in his bed ever again. It would be a rather cold place to be now.”

He could tell she was fighting to keep her emotions in check, but her cheeks had gone very red. “You want me to leave, yet you don’t seem in any hurry to leave yourself. What’s out there you’re trying so hard to avoid?”

“Everything.” He said it without thinking, without meaning to.

She studied him carefully. “I think you’re drinking to forget about what happened to your mother.”

His chest tightened. “Shut your mouth.”

She swept her glance across the temple, which was empty but for the two of them. “You won’t believe me, but I understand the pain you feel. Your need for vengeance.”

Their conversations rarely got as personal as this. “I feel nothing of the sort.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t really care what you believe, princess. And I’m not looking for a friend.”

“Perhaps you should be. From what I’ve seen, you’ve no other friends to speak of.”

That she seemed to know him so well unnerved him. “I don’t need friends.”

She studied him for a silent, uncomfortable while, her brows drawing together. “You try so hard to be horrible, to be cruel, to remain detached from anything that might cause you pain. But I saw the look on your face as they dragged you away from the executions yesterday. You were frantic when Lucia went missing in the crowd. You thought she’d been hurt.”

The fact that she’d so easily noticed this weakness made him wince on the inside. “My sister can take care of herself, believe me. She was fine, only temporarily lost. And she returned to the palace not only unhurt but with a handsome new tutor in tow. How delightful for everyone.”

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?”