Page 102 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

His hand ghosted on my face but did not touch me—he knew not to touch me at that moment. “I didn’t mean—”

“I forget,” I said, dropping the daisy and leaving after Nia and Cai. I forget who he was and what he’d done. My mind tricked me. He’d tricked me too, made me so comfortable around him, that I could forget just what he’d done. How he’d ruined me.

Lunch was set in one of the patios overlooking the gardens, a large parasol fluttered overhead shading us from the strong sun of the afternoon. The calmness of the spring breeze, the lull of rose scents and the slight buzz of nature life made the moment seem so dreamlike. This was something strange for me, I’d never eaten outside before like this. By the third bee I killed on the table, I knew why.

“Snow,” Nia gasped, scooping away another little creature I had my aim on. “Why would you kill them?”

“You’ve seen me kill stingers bigger than that one.”

She slapped my shoulder. “Don’t be cruel.”

“Oh, killing a bee makes me cruel.” I turned to Kilian and extended a piece of some sort of olive filled bread to his mouth for him to take a bite. “Hear that? It wasn’t all my kills.”

He took a bite and leaned back on his chair. “How much has that list grown now? If I remember correctly, last time it was in the hundreds.”

My expression dropped and I turned to look at Nia who was gapping at Kilian. She hadn’t been the one to tell him my dirty little secret. The method Alaric had taught me when father was training me to be his weapon—when I had started to kill.

He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I regretfully have to admit that it was one the only things I could figure out on my own when we were in Isjord, it wasn’t Nia.”

“Two hundred and five,” I said, dipping a spoon on the cold cucumber soup and extending it to him again.

He raised a brow. “You killed more than fifty times that count that day in the battle.”

I licked the spoon after him. “You’ve figured the list wrong. It wasn’t all kills that I counted. Only the ones I wasn’t meant to kill.” Giving him a tight smile, I said, “That other list isn’t one I can keep count on. It saves me prayer time for my other sins.”

Only ever count those you were never meant to kill, those that were never in your aim, but someone else’s and used by someone else. It won’t prevent the fall, but it will soften it, Alaric had taught me that. Though guilt had never eaten me after a kill, counting as he had said made me feel a bit more human in some strange sense.

He slanted me an unamused look. “What about the ones in the valley, do you count those?”

“They are alive, aren’t they? Those count toward the list of my mercy.”

The glass he held stopped midway.

Adriatians and their morals will forever be the paradox that no scholar would ever solve. I leaned on the table, propping my chin on my fists and batting my lashes at him. “Just say it. One's mercy is not for one to give, only for gods to gift.”

He took a sip from his drink while looking at me the whole time. “Versed as ever on the Astrum liber, my love. Then why are you gifting mercy?”

“Because, darling,” I said, leaning back. “In this realm, I am a god.”

Kilian didn’t seem too happy at that proclamation. Certainly because of what was said in the saintly books about those with a divine complex. It normally didn’t end well. But I wasn’t here for a long time, only for a fun one. So that didn’t bother me as much as it did him.

“I leave for two minutes and the tensions run high,” Mal said, settling on his seat in fresh black leathers and wet unbound hair that seemed to have grown longer. “What did I miss?”

Nia made to say something, but her words caught when her attention drifted toward the castle garden entrance. And I saw my friend crumble back into that little person her fears always made her look like. Nia was mighty and she knew it. She was knowledge and strength and goodness, and she knew it. She was everything this world had fought to rip off her. And I was a foot away from ripping off that fear that made her forget everything she knew of herself.

Nesrin reached our table, her disdain evident as her envious stare bounced between Nia and I.

“Nes,” Mal said, slouching back in his chair to squint at the intruder of our peace and my self-control. “What do we owe this unpleasant interruption to? Rather, which soldier shall I dismiss for letting you through to the king’s private quarters?”

She cleared her throat and straightened. “I heard my sister was here, I wanted a word.”

Lightning struck the sky and the woman jumped back with a flinch. “What did you just call her?” I asked, flinging a butter knife between my fingers that ought to be etched in her eyeball and through her skull.

Nia pointed a hand to the chair before her. “Sit. Have your word.”

A smirk tilted in the corner of my mouth at the tone of my friend. That’s my Nia.

Nesrin did as told, but seemed reluctant to speak, her gaze going to Kilian more often than I’d prefer. She cleared her throat. “Hel—”