Page 160 of Bride of the Midnight Prince

I watch the way he moves. He is graceful down to the way he selects a piece between his two fingers.

“Have you killed many people?” I ask.

He pauses moving his last piece long enough to shoot a look at me. “Yes.”

I chew my lip and take my turn.

“But,” he adds a moment later, when it’s his turn again, “I will not kill you.”

I restrain my rueful snort. “Do you enjoy killing?”

He sighs. “No. I am good at it, though. I do like being good at it.”

“I can see that. I think I would also like being good at it.”

He looks at me, as though trying to discern if I am serious or making a morbid joke.

“I don’t want to kill,” I explain, “but I think it might be nice to know what to do if, say, an assassin had a knife to my head.”

Pain flashes across Rahk’s face.

“You’re not still guilty over that!” I cry, shoving up to my elbow. “Please, I will not have you hating yourself for that!”

He shakes his head. Then he reaches across the board, and I don’t breathe as he lightly touches my temple. “You must reconcile yourself to the fact that I will never forgive myself for these scars.”

“They are basically invisible,” I grumble.

His silent reply is loud in the room:Not to me.

“I am glad you have never had to kill,” Rahk says, resuming play of our game. “The frightening part of it is how little you come to care.”

“Care about what?”

“The life you are taking. The first kills are always the hardest. Maybe for some people, they view every kill like their first. That was not how it was for me. The more I killed, the easier it became. Now, I do not think about whether they have families, or whether they are afraid or in pain. I just kill.”

He says it so simply. I study his face instead of the board. His jaw gives a tiny flex.

I lick my lips and say tentatively, “It seems like it would be a heavy burden to take every kill personally. You would probably go mad.”

“I probably would,” he replies ruefully. “Though sometimes I wonder if the callousness is madness itself.”

I think of all the people in Faerieland I cannot rescue. Callousness almost seems like a reprieve from the yawning torment inside me. I change the direction of the conversation. “When was your first kill?”

He frowns, considering the board between us. “When I was ninety-nine, I hunted down an assassin who had come to kill Lord Nothril. I brought him back and slaughtered him before my parents. I proved myself to them that day.” He looks up to find me staring at him wide-eyed. “Time runs differently in Faerieland, and we mature much slower than humans. The equivalent human age would have been around thirteen.”

“You must have been a bloodthirsty child,” I say.

His laugh is low and rumbling. “Compared to your average human child. But Faerieland is not a tame place. While you humans like to play your games of societal expectations, we play ours in blood. The stakes are higher, but so is the reward.”

“What is the reward, then?”

“Long life. Beauty. Power. Pleasure.”

“But you only have one chance at obtaining those things? If you take a misstep, if you ally with the wrong force . . .?”

“You lose all of it.”

Rahk plays an aggressive move that destroys the plan I was working toward. I’m forced to adjust my strategy. “You crave those things? Pleasure and power?” I ask.

---