The Carlin let out a tinkling laugh.
“Of course they didn’t.” She swept an arm back at her four sons, standing silently at the back of the hall. “Lonan killed them.”
It took a long time for her words to register. I stared at her blankly, sucking in tiny, shallow breaths, before slowly raising my eyes to the back of the cavernous, bitterly cold room.
I met his gaze, knowing that my own was pleading with him to deny it. Even if it was just a tiny shake of his head—any sign that she was lying.
But she couldn’t lie. None of them could lie.
Lonan was finally looking at me now. His eyes were big burning holes that didn’t waver from my face, even as his throat bobbed. I thought I saw his chin tremble before he clamped his lips tight together in a grim line. He didn’t say a word.
I was too shocked to show any emotion at all, even as my insides crumpled with total and utter grief. Grief at the thought of my parents beingmurdered. It wasn’t just a freak accident.
Grief at the thought that the man I loved so much it hurt, even after all of this, had been the one who killed them.
The Carlin tutted. “Is that really a surprise? Heismy blade. My assassin. Killing is second nature to him. Killingmortalsis barely sport. Like squashing a crawling little insect under his boot.”
She looked back at him over her shoulder, but I could see the gleam of her teeth as she grinned.
“Tell me, my little blackbird, did he beg for his life? Did he plead for his son? Or can you not even remember, as inconsequential as it was?”
There was silence for a long, agonising moment. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I stared at the back of the Carlin’s blue dress, trying to block everything out. Trying not to hear when he did eventually speak.
“I can’t remember.”
His voice was so quiet, it barely reached us. I still flinched like he’d stabbed his blade into my chest.
He couldn’t remember. He’d murdered my parents and he couldn’t even remember if they’d said anything before he did it.
“T-t-tell me h-how you d-d-did it.”
The words scraped from my throat before I even realised I was going to speak. I forced myself to stare him in the eye, blocking out the memories of his sweet mouth and his rare smiles. The sight of him sitting cross-legged on the rug in my living room, drinking tea and helping me copy out potions. Of him lying in my bed beside me, his face soft and relaxed, the sweet tip of his pointed ear poking out from his dark hair. His hands on me, his body beneath mine and over me, the sound of him moaning my name when he was inside me.
The cat curled up beside me on the bed, purring just from being near me. The wolf offering me comfort when I’d first gotten here, trying to console me when I cried for my dead parents and the lonely ache that had threatened to choke me.
It had all been lies. A game.
“He slit their throats,” the Carlin told me brightly when Lonan said nothing at all.
I flinched, but didn’t take my eyes off him. He stared back, the mask in place, but his black eyes were too bright.
I felt my own eyes burn back. But with hatred. With a promise.
I would never forgive him.