“Myrcy?” Lindsay slurred her words slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I-”
“Have you figured out how to save the world?” she giggled.
“No,” I chuckled, pulling her hair back from hanging in her face. “Not yet.”
9
Myrcedes
I’d felt strange around Kalian ever since I went to the Floor of Dreams. Our interactions were already awkward - after all, he betrayed his Queen for my sake, nearly being sentenced to death until I came to save him at the eleventh hour. That created a strange dynamic between people. Yet despite all of that, the thing that haunted my mind the most was what the reflection on the Floor had told me would become of Kalian. The image of the guillotine had haunted my nightmares, the idea of Kalian being held beneath the blade, the knowledge that this could be his fate if I didn’t find a way to stop it… I was terrified for him. I didn’t know if this was a prophecy or a warning, or if it was for the next week or fifty years from now. Either way, I felt compelled to spend more time with him, learn about him, learn about his life, and figure out how to save him from what I’d seen.
He sat in an armchair next to a window in an alcove on the third floor, looking out the window like he was in some kind of dramatic music video. I laughed a bit but kept myself quiet. He noticed me anyway and glanced in my direction, looking me up and down before turning back to the window. “Your hair…”
“Hm? Oh,” I blinked. It had been a few days since I’d dyed it, but I had yet to see Kalian. I’d almost forgotten about it. It was surprising that he noticed. “Yes. Siena and Lindsay helped me dye it.”
I almost expected a compliment or any generally positive sort of comment to follow, but I was clearly too optimistic.
“What do you want?” he asked sharply.
“I wanted to talk,” I shrugged. “Is that okay?”
“I suppose,” he rolled his eyes. I frowned and leaned against the wall across from him.
“What the hell did I do to you?”
He glanced back at me, his hands clasped together loosely and resting against his chin, hiding half his face and making it even more difficult to read his stony expression. “You’ve done nothing but assist and save me, and I am grateful.”
I frowned. It wouldn’t hurt him to act like it. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was having a hard time adjusting to so much sudden change. I’d bring it up later.
“May I help you?” he raised an eyebrow.
I sighed. “I just wanted to talk… I have some more questions for you if you’re up for it.” I waited for an answer, but he just gave me a slight nod that I took as a yes instead. “I was thinking about everything, the trial, the council… um, there was a man there. It looked like you knew him. He was the one that took the… the cuffs off when they said they’d let you go.”
A look of understanding and some other emotion I couldn’t place spread across his face. I recognized the man from two places. He was the one from Kalian’s trial, but he was also the one who seemed to lead the executions in my vision on the Floor of Dreams. “Who was he?”
“His name is Bahz,” Kalian sighed, leaning back in the chair and dropping his hands. “He’s - well, he was the Lieutenant. I suppose they’ve promoted him to General now that the position is open.”
“Does that mean you two worked together?”
He scoffed. “He was… for a long time. He was my closest friend, my right hand. He had an ambition that drove him to be the perfect soldier. He carried out orders to their fullest extent, exceeding expectations on a regular basis. He’s always been unflinchingly loyal to Minerva. I expect that’s no different now.”
“Why couldn’t anyone else see how truly awful what Minerva did was?” I frowned. “Surely, you can’t have been the only person in the army with a conscience.”
“I wasn’t.” He spoke sharply, and I flinched a bit, surprised to hear such a tone. “My men were good, strong, and intelligent. I trained many of them myself.”
I felt myself get defensive as he grew heated. “I’m just saying if more of them knew right from wrong, wouldn’t they have defended you? Or stood against Minerva?”
“That wasn’t their job! I was her General. I knew her plots and plans in ways they didn’t. No one knew her as I did, so no one knew how truly evil she’d become. Now that it’s over, they don’t want to believe it. I don’t blame them. If the denial of what had happened were an option, I might…” he trailed off. “No. I could never deny what had happened if I suspected it was the truth. But I envy those who can.”
A softness crept into his expression and his voice. It wasn’t aimed at me, but it was an improvement to the hostility that he’d had a moment before. It was at times like this that reminded me that Seelie and Unseelie in the Queen’s army of the fae world couldn’t lie. He’d taken an oath when he joined to be truthful. This had been a little surprising to me - I’d seen enough people on Earth who found it far too easy to lie without it ever influencing their conscience - but Kalian embodied this in every way. He wasn’t always right, but he never told a falsehood if he knew any better. I admired that discipline. I admired a lot of things about him and his convictions. I just wished he wasn’t such an ass about it all.
“Minerva was the only leader everyone
