Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I'd only heard it a couple of times before, but I was becoming eerily acquainted with the creaking sound of the door when it opened. I turned just in time to see Zelle slipping in, her face a blank mask hidden behind strings of black beads. A veil that jingled musically when she moved.

I smiled at her.

She flinched. "Don't smile at me, Olya. You should hate me."

"Why should I hate you?" I asked, and she looked insulted.

"Because I know your secret. She was shaking, full of self-righteousness. "You're just as barren as I am. You've never once had the bleedings, and you have no more right to your soldier than I had to mine. You're destructive and deceitful, and you ought to learn your place."

I tilted my head to the side, absorbing her words slowly. "So, because you never had the right to your soldier, you wish to take away mine?"

"That's right." She wasn't even trying to hide it.

What a hateful little creature she was. Such pettiness. Such jealousy. I wasn't surprised. I was just disappointed and hurt. I loved this girl and she was betraying me without even the grace of looking sorry for it.

She'd turned against me entirely, blinded by a sense of duty to her beliefs. In the end, that mattered to her more than me.

I wanted to laugh. Wanted to take her into my arms and pat her head, tell her how silly she was, but how much I adored her anyway. I actually felt a bit proud of her for taking a stand, for showing her strength. She didn't know how brave she was for living in this world while keeping her sweetness, her innocence, intact.

"Good for you, Zelle."

She ignored that. "They promised not to execute you."

"And you believed them," I said. "You always had a trusting nature."

"You think I'm stupid, I suppose."

"Yes."

"Don't you know anything?" Her temper flared. In her eyes, there was fear. "Don't you know what will happen to you after you die?"

"I'll be dead."

"Your refusal to acknowledge your fate will be your doom."

"Okay, Zelle," I said patiently. "Okay."

My easy dismissal of her words infuriated her. She was nearly shaking now.

"Your mother knows you're here," she threw the words at me. "And yet she's doing nothing to save you. She's abandoned you, Olya."

I didn't react, didn't even move. I blinked at her in vacant interest, her hatefulness intriguing to me.

She lashed out even harder, grasping desperately for any weapon she could use. "They're going to execute your soldier. He's been sent back to the City of Roses for an official, military execution."

I still didn't move. I continued to stare at her. Slowly, the tears came, dripping down my cheeks. She looked horrified. My crying disturbed her—possibly reminded her of emotions she herself knew too well. The kind of crushing sadness she must have experienced.

Suddenly, her face flooded with regret. Not for having inflicted it on me, but for being reminded of her own pain. She was falling apart, tearing open at the seams, her plan backfiring. Vengeance didn't come naturally to her. She was too fragile, too sweet. She couldn't carry around all that hate without feeling it digging its teeth into her, like that trap she'd stepped in all those months ago.

It might as well have been an eternity ago, now. That time when I'd sewn her up myself, with my own hands. I'd stayed by her side when she was stuck in bed, held her when she cried because the pain was so great, spoon fed her so she could regain her strengths.