Page 77 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“Why?”

“In the process of kidnapping her, I killed a dozen men. Bad men. Men who were sent to kill the woman I took. Men who worked for a terrible man, doing dark and depraved things, but I still roasted them into sooty little piles of ash in the street.” I risk one glance her way.

She swallows and blinks. “Okay.” Her mouth’s compressed tightly. “And did you—what did you do with the woman you took?”

“She escaped,” I say. “She was a friend of the woman I was looking for—the woman who had the ability to nullify my powers.”

Izzy frowns. “So you were threatening them and seeking the other woman. . .to do what?”

“To kill her,” I admit. “I’m not sure whether I would have done it—it would’ve depended on how her face looked.”

“Her face—whether it was dark or light, you mean?”

I nod.

“And have you met her now?”

“Yes.”

“And how did she look?” Her tone’s hard. “Did you try to kill her?”

“I wanted her dead,” I say. “But I was conflicted. Her face was dark around the edges—she’d done some questionable things. But it was mostly bright, as was her brother’s. He was actually the bigger threat.”

“Is that why you didn’t kill them?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t kill them because they tricked me—they gave me the earth and wind powers I wanted, and doing so knocked me out. It was too much magic to assimilate all at once. Then I woke up, stuck as a horse, and the rest you know.”

She closes her eyes and presses her fingers on the bridge of her nose.

“If you have a headache, I can heal that,” I offer.

“No, thanks.”

“You can’t deal with violence and clean up ugliness without getting a little dirty yourself,” I say.

Her eyes fly to mine. “You can’t kill people who area little bad.”

“Why not?” I ask. “Aren’t I better at deciding that than anyone else, thanks to my powers?”

She flinches. “You can’t do it, because that’s my only defense for you. When my mother and Steve and the others say you’re too dark to be saved, when they tell me you need to be destroyed, when they say you’re a bad man I should abandon, I will tell them that people can be redeemed. But if you go around killing people who are bad, then that means you don’t think it’s true. It means peoplecan’tbe redeemed.”

Shoot. I’m undermining my own argument without realizing it.

“You can’t see your own face, can you?”

“With a mirror,” I say.

“I mean the light and the darkness.”

I swallow. “No.”

“But this other guy, he could see your countenance, right?”

I nod slowly. “Probably.”

“And if yours is dark? If your face is more dark than light, should you be killed?”

I sigh. “Yes, by my own ethics, I suppose I should be.”

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