Page 147 of Bride of the Midnight Prince

She doesn’t reply, clenching her elbow in one hand, her knuckles turning white.

A pang hits my chest. “I—I shouldn’t have mentioned your mother. I am sorry.”

She sits upright and sucks in a breath through her teeth—pulling together her rattled composure. “No, no, it is fine. I just haven’t . . . I did not think I would hear that name from you.”

Does she know much about the Ivy Mask? All this time, could Kat have been the key to finding him?

An uncomfortable weight settles in my gut. If she knew I wanted the Ivy Mask for more than just a means of getting Pavi out of Faerie, she would hate me.

“You know him?” I ask tentatively.

Despite her attempts to stay cool, her rapidly tapping foot betrays how uncomfortable she is. “No, I never met him. But I heard the name. A long time ago.”

So she won’t be helpful after all. I should be disappointed, but instead, I am relieved. If I caught the Ivy Mask and killed him because of information Kat gave me, she would never forgive me.

“You want your sister to be free of Nothril?” she asks. “Or all Faerie?”

“All Faerie,” I reply immediately. “Fae rulers cannot cross the border into the human lands. If she were here, in the human world, Lord and Lady Nothril could not pursue her.”

She considers this for a moment. “You would have her come here, but you yourself would go back? I thought she was the reason you had to go back.”

“She is the most pressing reason, but not the only one.”

“Then what other reasons take you back?”

Is there something behind that question? Does she want me to stay? My heart quickens. “I have a throne to inherit.”

“Are you the only person who can inherit it?”

“One of my sisters could. If something happened to me.” I am not the only heir, and thus, I am, technically, disposable. And if I find myselfdisposed, then who will protect Pavi?

“So you don’thaveto return for your throne. Unless you wanted to. Do you want to?”

Her dark eyes pierce me with their intensity, making me forget to breathe momentarily. She leans forward, and there is that sharp cunning flashing in her face. She usually hides it so well.

“I don’t believe you want your throne, Rahk,” she says quietly, though her words strike like arrows. “There is something else taking you back to Faerieland. What is it?”

So this is what it feels to be on the other end of my interrogations. I do not like it. When Kat looks at me like that, it feels like there is nothing I can hide from her. No one can see through me like she does. Not even Ash. It is something I have come to both dread and desire.

“I have a dear friend,” I say hesitantly. “If I left Nothril and abandoned my throne, I would be cast away from Faerie. I would never see him again.”

She studies me intently. I try to make my face as unreadable as possible.

“That’s not why,” she says at last.

“Kat—”

“I am not saying that you do not care about your friend, or that you would not be devastated by his loss, but there is something else that pulls you back to Faerieland. What is it?”

Tension builds up inside my chest. Thereissomething pulling me back—but until now, I did not realize it was something besides Pavi or Ash or my responsibilities as a prince of Nothril. The thought of never going back fills me with coldness, with a sense of true, permanent failure. Icannotgive up. It would prove—it would prove—

Then, like the clouds parting to reveal the sun, I finally understand.

My voice comes out low and quiet, but it fills the carriage. “I have always feared that the longer I live in Nothril, the more I lose myself—and the more corrupt I become. Ash always said I would be the first ruler in many, many ages who could bring goodness back to Nothril, but I have always worried that by the time I ascended the throne, there would be nothing left of me. I would be another Lord and Lady Nothril.”

Kat listens intently, her face softening the longer I speak, as though she understands. Part of me relaxes. Maybe shedoesunderstand. Maybe she won’t despise me for all the things I have done.

Maybe she will someday understand that when I destroy the Ivy Mask to save Pavi’s life, I destroy myself too.

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