Page 45 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

Kej rested an arm on his sister’s shoulder and leaned in, eyes glassy from the wine. “How many coppers?” he asked, and Zylah remembered herself, remembered that the others were still standing there beside them.

“Three,” she said at the same time as Holt, one side of his mouth lifting.

Nye shot them a smile before she slipped away into the crowd, a blond-haired male hot on her heels. The redhead beckoned to Kej, and Rin quickly dispersed into the celebration behind them, leaving Holt and Zylah alone.

“I’m formally meeting with Malok tomorrow; I’d like you to join me,” Holt said, offering Kopi a light scratch on his head. The little owl hopped off Zylah’s shoulder into Holt’s palm, puffing out his chest in satisfaction.

“Am I here as your friend or as your example?”

“Example of what?” Holt reached over Zylah’s head to deposit Kopi safely back into his alcove, and she ignored the warmth of him, averting her gaze to avoid meeting his.

“Of humans and Fae coexisting,” she said at last, taking a step away so she didn’t have to tilt her head back to speak to him.

“You’re here because I need your help. I can’t do this without you.”

Zylah had to turn away from the look in his eyes. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“We parted on good terms. I have no regrets when it comes to Jora.”

“And Raif?”

“Raif was… complicated.” He shifted beside her, and Zylah knew the expression that would have fallen across his face, the pinch of his brow, the tightness in his mouth, but she kept her attention on the party instead of meeting his eyes. The three males from earlier had disappeared, mercifully.

Before, the music had been slow, quiet. Sorrowful and sweet. Now the tempo was faster, a musician beating their instrument like a drum between plucking the strings. Couples danced together, lost to the music, bodies moving as if they were aching to be anywhere else. Or maybe they enjoyed an audience—the people of this court were certainly not shy of showing affection. Then again, Raif had never shied from it, either.

A stab of guilt pressed at her chest, and she rested her empty glass on the table beside her, loosing a breath between tight lips. If she let the guilt surface… if she gave it space to breathe— “What I hate the most is that I can’t go back and change it. That I can’t take back the things I said. The things I didn’t say.”

“Zylah.”

“Did you have a funeral for him?” She looked up to find Holt watching her, his hair a little more ruffled than it had been a few moments before.

“A small service, yes.”

“Good.”

A line appeared between his eyebrows. “He loved you.”

“Then why did he lie to me about so much? So many seemingly little things that keep stacking on top of each other, things he hid from me, and I can’t…”

“Zylah.”

“He even lied about knowing you were training me. Why would he do that, Holt?”

Holt’s frown smoothed out, and in its place was the same blank expression she could never quite decipher in the past. “We grew up together. He was…” A quick pinch of his brow, and then it was gone. “Like a brother. But Raif was competitive, particularly when it came to me.”

“There are the helpers, and then there are the tricksters, the deceivers,” Zylah murmured, lost in a memory.

Holt studied her, waiting for an explanation.

“Raif told me that once. Maybe it was a warning.” She couldn’t meet his gaze again, so she watched the Fae dancing before them, willing herself not to think back to the festival of Imala and the time she’d spent with Raif.

“He loved you. From the moment he laid eyes on you.”

“For six months I’ve torn myself apart over that. He told me he loved me, and I never said it back.”

“You cared for him deeply, everyone knew that.”

The music stopped, dancers broke away from their partners or walked off together into the crowd, and Zylah’s heartbeat was so loud in her skull she’d have given anything to silence it along with the music. “Not the way he loved me.”

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