Page 75 of A Kingdom of Destruction

“Why does anyone?” Cillian tossed back at her. “They want to win.”

“A little vague, brother,” Roran snapped.

“I can’t speak to the machinations of a man I’ve never met personally,” Cillian barked. The two brothers rounded on each other. “I can only make my own assumptions based on the type of person the mortal king is rumored to be. Unflappable and cruel. I banked on those qualities when I planned out our attack, and look at where it got us. Victory.”

The two men were separated in her mind, the man who stole fae magic and warped it, turned it against the people, and the father who cared for his kids. How could they be the same? It made no sense to her.

She was the last of her line, the last Elridge. Her siblings were dead, and her father left as the lone leader of a scattered kingdom. This dark truth?—

“What do I do? How do I end all of it?” She glanced up at Roran. At Cillian. “How do I end the pain and the war for good? How do I make reparations for what’s been done?”

Whatever it took for the focus to move from the humans and her people, she would do it. The responsibility rested on her shoulders alone, they were right. Her father would never take the necessary steps to rectify the damage he inflicted. To return what he’d stolen.

Not when he was busy scrambling to pick up the scattered pieces of his ruined kingdom. Hell, no wonder the fae hated him so much. No wonder why they wanted to see her strung up rather than walking their halls alive and well.

“The best way to do that would be to marry for peace,” Cillian replied, not unkindly. His gentle tone might as well have been the bite of the end of a whip. She did not deserve his softness. “A treaty between Mourningvale and Grimrose, made legal and binding.”

It was the same thing the Fae King had told her. To make a choice, to marry his son. Or both. But it was too early. She had too much to process, to even consider?—

“It doesn’t matter what my father said about you not being a suitable match. He doesn’t know you the way we do.”

She stared at Cillian and shook all over, as violent as a rockslide. He would be the logical choice, the assumed choice, as the oldest male, as the crown prince. And yet she felt the presence of Roran’s eyes on her skin, the heat from them, more keenly than before. She didn’t need to face him for his features to flash through her mind.

“Give me a little time to think about it, please,” Aven hedged.

Marriage… she’d seen it done well, she’d seen matches fail abysmally. Several of her sister’s friends had entered into marriages of convenience or ties that would have elevated their social status. Terrible things happened behind closed doors sometimes.

Aven doubted it would be the case with Cillian.

Still, she’d always told herself she’d never get married. Hated the idea of it, hated thinking of herself as a wife.

Cillian nodded, sympathetic. “That’s all we can ask for. Take the time you need.”

He would be a kind and decent husband. So why could she not stop thinking about Roran?

25

Whatever the extent of her people’s involvement with these fae, Aven was determined to figure it out.

Her head spun, her gut refused to settle, and her mind conjured several fantasies to counteract the tale Cillian had spun. Even when he showed her the evidence: a six-inch scar at the base of the Darkroot.

No one could answer, or would, when she asked how King Fergus had made it this far in the first place. The fighting had already been ongoing for years by the time her father arrived here. Had he used their distraction against them?

More than anything, she wanted to confront her father and force him to explain. She wanted to hear, from his mouth, what really happened. Thinking about seeing him caused heat to spiral through her and her gorge to rise.

The idea to steal from the Darkroot could not have suddenly burst to life in her father’s head. It had to have come from somewhere or someone. Maybe another noble or one of the warbands who had openly discussed ways for humans to harness magic.

She had no way of knowing without a crystal ball to peer into the past.

The next several days were spent alone in the library—asaloneas someone in her position could be. There were always watchful eyes and ears around her to ensure she stayed in line. Nora remained close until she grew bored of waiting for Aven to finish her research and close the books.

There was too much to learn and, she felt, no time to do so.

All her life, she’d been fed a combination of lies and truth. The humans and the fae had never gotten along, that much was correct. She read about it in their books.

The fae, it seemed, were no better at capturing the entirety of the situation than the human historians she’d seen carrying around their journals.

She found nothing about the start of the conflict. Nothing to give her the smallest clue about what prompted the disagreements between their peoples.

---