Chapter 14: Ronan's POV

Ronan's POV

I stood in the infirmary doorway and watched a dying girl tell the truth.

Lenora did not cry this time.

She held the doorframe, and her voice was thin and even.

"I'll say it to the Court," she told Isobel. "All of it, out loud, with everyone at table so nobody can leave."

"When?" Isobel asked.

"Tomorrow at noon. If I live until then."

"You'll live until then."

"Then I'll say it, and you can do what you like with me after."

Lucian had not moved from beside the bench.

He looked at Lenora.

Then he went down on his knees on the stone floor, in front of Isobel, and bowed his head.

I had been in a cell for four years.

I knew what a man looked like when he had run out of things to stand on.

I should have felt pity.

What I felt was a hot, low, ugly jealousy that I was not proud of.

He had two hundred years of her.

He had her laughing across a council table, and her hand in his hair after a long day.

He could say I'm sorry in a voice she had trusted since before my father died.

I had one night in her bed and a bone in her side.

"Get up," Isobel said to him.

"I won't ask you to forgive me."

"Good. Get up. I don't want you on the floor, Lucian. I want you to look at what you did."

He rose, and he did look.

I understood then that the thing she was giving him was worse than a blow.

She turned and walked out past me, and I fell in beside her without being told.

Neither of us spoke on the east stair.

The hunters had gone, and the Elders with them, and the whole palace was holding its breath.

She waited until I had slid the bolt of the Wolf Tower.

Then she put her back against the door and slid down it until she sat on the floor.

"He cried," she said. "I thought I'd feel something."

"Do you?"

"I feel tired."

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