Page 74 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

“A deal with my mother?” I ask, heart speeding up at the idea I may be close to the truth.

“Eleanor,” he says, his voice holding a note of request and warning.

I stand up, dropping the blanket in general frustration. He can’t tell me anything, and I can’t trust him. The stalemate remains.

So what I have learned? My mother made a deal, apparently. But what could she have possibly wanted from him? She always seemed content, happy with her life. She wasn’t the type to wish for riches or love. My father certainly didn’t need fae magic to make him adore her. Everyone did.

Worse, what did she give in return? That question follows me like a black shadow. Could this deal be the reason for my sickness as a child? Or for hers as an adult? For once, my mind has found an avenue it doesn’t want to explore, and I shy away from its depths. There’s no point subjecting myself to that, not without a way to know the truth.

“I wish you’d try to understand,” Ruskin says, watching me pace with frustration.

I let out a harsh little laugh at the irony. “I am trying.” That’s the point. I want nothing more than for this roadblock to melt away, but my fear of the truth won’t let me go.

Ruskin makes a noise of doubt, and I spin on my heel, facing him.

“You don’t believe me?” I ask, surprised.

“It’s just, you didn’t exactly offer me much understanding before.”

“When?” I demand.

“Oh, let me see, perhaps the night you left without a word? Simply walked out of this realm, never giving me a chance to explain?”

“You can’t explain,” I point out, the heat of anger rising to my cheeks.

“You didn’t know that then. And anyway, I could have told you why that was the case—that I’m magically bound. But you chose to assume the worst of me, like you always do.”

“That’s not true.”

“How could I say it if it weren’t?” he bites back.

He believes it to be true at least, and that stings. I try to think of it from his perspective: how he felt that he’d opened up to me, let me in, only for me to hurt him at the first chance, running for the hills. Hadn’t I confirmed all his worse fears? That if you came to rely on someone, they’ll let you down?

“I…I’m sorry,” I say. I’d been so focused on the marks he’d left on me, I hadn’t stopped to think how I’d wounded him in return. “I should at least have said goodbye. I know that now. You deserved an explanation.”

He looks like I’ve slapped him. Like he didn’t expect me to agree, and now that I have, it’s rattled him more than anything else.

“But in my defense, you’ve never made it easy to trust you, Ruskin. The way you always hold back and hide things—and yes,” I hold up my hand to cut him off when he looks like he’s going to interrupt, “I know it always seems like there’s good reason to you. But when I can’t know the reason, it feels like I’m always being left in the dark. I mean, you spend all your free time striking shady deals with my people, for goodness sakes, just so you can hold on to your secrets and power, rather than ask for help. And after all that you expect me to just blindly accept you have good reasons for all of it? That there’s always a justification for the way you hurt people?”

“I don’t like to hurt people, Eleanor.”

“I want to believe that, Ruskin,” I say, tears in my eyes, choking my throat. I do want to, so badly. Because if I did I wouldn’t need to hold back anymore.

“But this world is a cruel one,” he continues. “And sometimes you have to do cruel things to avoid greater suffering.”

“And the deals? You let me think they were to save you, but that wasn’t true, was it? You didn’t need them to keep you alive, and you don’t need them now.”

“I haven’t made a deal with a human since I came to visit you in Styrland, and I don’t intend to make any more.”

I gape at him. “You don’t?”

He sighs, sitting down on a log he positioned by the fire. He indicates for me to sit with him.

“You want to be able to trust me? Very well. The deals were never for me.”

At the frankness of his words, I accept his invitation to sit, listening intently.

“Everyone assumed that power went to me, that whatever I pulled from humans I used to build my own strength. But I was strong because I was High King. No one knew that, so they assumed my power came from my trades with humans. But I didn’t keep what I gained from those deals.”

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