To Kill A Kingdom | ACOTAR ✔️

Chapter 15 - "Just make sure it doesn't happen again."

It was late at night when Evette was woken by a knock on her door, and no matter how much she ignored it, it never left. It stayed consistent - making her throw the covers from her before she made her way over to her door, and she basically ripped it open. And then she looked up and found Romulus was stood there.

"Did I wake you, my princess?" Romulus mused to her, a small smirk pulling at his lips. Before he cut past her and entered her room, and she knew she was way too tired to argue with him, so she only closed her bedroom door.

She turned and found him settling himself on her bed - he laid down on it, and had kicked his shoes off in doing so. Evette joined him on her bed, and instead of laying down like he was, she sat upright, pulling her nightdress down her legs as she did. "What do you want? I'm tired."

"Did you really mean it?" Romulus asked her. "What you said about regretting what you did to my mother?"

"I did." Evette nodded at him. Evette remembered that Romulus' step father wasn't exactly the star father. His step father was the adopted brother to the father of her cousin's, and he was almost as bad as him. One of the only memories she had of the man was how he had dismissed Romulus when they were children - she couldn't remember specifics.

But she could remember him dismissing Romulus rather nastily, and she remembered how Romulus' face had fell. She remembered because she had decided to go over to him and introduce herself to him - it was how they met one another for the first time. She was 9, and he was 13, and she felt that they may have become good friends if things had been different.

She supposed that his mother might've been the only parent that actually loved him unconditionally. And she had taken that away from him in her rampage - and now she reflected on it, she knew there was no reason to kill his mother. She had done nothing to her or her brothers, she was an innocent that was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Romulus outstretched his arm out over where Evette had been laying just moments before, and he felt the warmth that still lingered there. He had never really experienced the feeling of having a warmth of another in his bed - he found it felt...nice. Even if it wasn't his bed - it was nice to feel what it might've felt like.

Of course, Romulus had had one night stands - in fact, he had had many. But none of them stayed with him, they always left. Romulus felt that he craved something domestic like that - he wished for someone to call his own, for someone to sleep beside, to wake up to someone instead of waking up alone.

"I hated you for so long...for killing her." Romulus admitted to her. "The others...I didn't really care about. They never truly were my family. But my mother...I hated you! It was why I agreed to pretend to be Caspian, why I removed my own eye to hide as him. I was so furious. And then...when I found you that night I sent you away...I found I didn't want to send you where she wanted me to. She wanted you sent to Hybern itself...but I couldn't. So, I sent you to Prythian."

"Why are you telling me this?" Evette asked him.

"I want you to know that I'm not as cruel and terrible as you probably think I am." Romulus told her. "So you don't take the dragon back from me after the war. I want to keep her...to keep something with me that reminds me of my mother."

"I wasn't going to take it back." Evette told him. "Now, is that why you woke me up? Because this could've waited. I am exhausted...so..." she made a shooing gesture to him.

"It is not the only reason I'm here." He told her. "I want you to show me that you truly have her. And I just...want to see her."

"In the dead of night?" Evette raised a brow at the man. He simply stared over at her, and it was clear from the way he hadn't moved that he had no intention of leaving unless if it was for her to show him to where she had stored the frozen dragon. "If I show you...will you leave and let me sleep?" She groaned.