Chapter 199: Nobody wins
LAURENT
I brought her a decent meal.
Not because she deserved it, particularly, but because I was not interested in being the kind of person who withheld food from someone in a cell, regardless of what they had done to get there. I had spent enough time cataloguing the ways people used small cruelties to make themselves feel powerful, and I had no interest in adding to that catalogue with my own entry.
She looked up when I came through the door.
Whatever expression she had been wearing before I arrived, she rearranged it quickly into something more composed, the specific type of composure she wore when she wanted to remind you that she had not been broken by whatever had happened to her most recently.
I set the tray down on the small table and pulled the chair from the corner and sat.
"You brought food," she said.
"I did."
"Is there something in it?"
"No." I leaned back. "Eat it or do not. I came to talk."
She looked at the tray for a moment, then at me, measuring something.
"About what?" she said.
"About Theodore."
The composure flickered. Just slightly. Just enough for me to see that the name still landed somewhere.
"What about him?" she acted like she was not bothered as she chuckled.
"I want to know if you ever felt guilty," I said. "Not the performative version. Not the kind you would produce for an elder’s circle. Actually guilty."
She looked at me for a long time.
"I did what I had to do," she said. "Given the circumstances I was operating inside. My father would never have given me what I deserved through conventional means. Theodore stood between me and what I had worked for, not through any fault of his own, simply by existing in the position he occupied." She settled back against the cell wall. "I have never pretended otherwise."
"That is not what I asked."
"It is the answer I have."
I nodded slowly. "And Theodore? Not his position. Him. Your brother. Did you ever feel guilty about pushing him toward what he chose to do?"
Something crossed her face that she controlled almost immediately, but I had been watching people manage their expressions for long enough to catch what lived underneath the control.
"My brother did not love himself," she said. "That was the truth of his situation. If he had, he would have found a way to persevere. He would have fought for his life the way people who value their lives fight for them." She looked at me directly. "That would make me sick, genuinely sick, if I let myself believe I was the deciding factor. Because then I would have to sit in this cell and carry that for the rest of my life, and I do not intend to do that. I have no hand in this."
"You planted the idea," I said. "I know that now. The cruel suggestion that if he could not have what he wanted, everyone should lose. You said those words to him."
"I told him the truth of his situation," she said. "What he did with it was his own choice."
"Yes," I said. "It was. And yet in death, he stayed." I held her gaze. "He lingered in this estate for years. I have been told that the obsession has to be the right kind for something that outlandish to happen. For a spirit to manifest the way he did." I paused. "He got a second chance with me, his mate. Fate decided I deserved another chance to speak to him. And the message he left me was that he is at peace now. That he is trying to make peace." I looked at her. "He made peace. And yet somehow you are the one sitting here still villainizing everyone around you."
She was quiet.
"Let me guess," she said after a moment. "You are here to punish me. After this, you withhold food, remind me of my failures, get your satisfaction from watching me sit in this cell."
I laughed.
The sound surprised me slightly. It was genuine.
"You really think you occupy that much space in my mind?" I chuckled again. "I brought you a decent meal. I came to say my piece. That is all this is." I looked at her steadily. "You are sitting in a cell because of your own decisions. You did not even get to taste whatever victory you were building toward. That is enough without me needing to add anything."
"Neither will any of you," she said. "My father will not last much longer. The moment he is gone, every fanged interest in this family will show itself. Whatever tolerance exists for a stranger on the Alpha seat ends the day that old man stops breathing."
"You think Étienne wants the throne?" I said. "You genuinely believe that is what this is about?"
She looked at me.
"He came here because he was saved by Alpha Dorian," I said. "He had nowhere else to go and someone offered him safety and he took it. He is on that seat because your father in his own grief, selfish as it was, genuinely thought the goddess gave him a second chance. I too played a part. I convinced him he could use the position to reach the people who hurt him. That was the argument I made. The revenge was always the goal, not the seat." I paused. "He would give it back without significant hesitation when the time was right. He has made that vocal to me as much early on."
Something moved in her face that I did not spend too much time analyzing.
"If you had simply waited," I said, "you might have gotten what you wanted. Theodore did not want the seat either. We had plans, once Dorian was gone. We were going to walk away from all of it, the title, the politics, the estate. Be rogues. Live simply somewhere." I stopped. "A fantasy, maybe. Reality has a way of complicating those. But the seat would have been available and your father’s alternatives for filling it were always going to be limited even if he did not want to look your way."
I stood.
"Maybe not, though," I added, almost to myself. "The high ranking elders in this family have a long tradition of deciding why a woman should not hold what a woman might have clearly earned. So perhaps your madness was valid in a way I am not fully comfortable crediting." I shook my head. "That is the tragedy of it."
I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair.
"I came to say my piece," I said. "Whatever is coming tomorrow in that sentencing, I hope you find something worth holding onto." I turned toward the door.
Behind me, I heard a silence to her that meant she was crashing through several things simultaneously and had not found language for any of them.
I looked back.
She was staring at the tray.
"Keep your energy for the elder’s circle," I said. "Eat. You will need the strength."
I then walked out.