by Maisey Yates
At the behest of their master.
Agamemnon was the one who wanted to stage a bloody rebellion, and he had been intent on using Lazarus to do so. He had also not intended to die, Lazarus was certain of that. But he had.
Everything... Everything had been a lie. He hadn’t been saved. He had been brought in and manipulated. Trained. He knew that what Agamemnon had told him about the land being stolen from their people was true. He had done his research outside of Liri. Agamemnon’s anger had come from a real place, but what he had done...
And he must be responsible for the death of Lazarus’s brother, the one he had never met. Of Dionysus. For it could only be Agamemnon’s dogs. Of course. This idea that the wolves never touch those who lived in the wood... They were kept contained. And he had listened to folk tales and fairy stories and taken them on as real because he had been wounded that his family had not come for him.
And he had nearly... He would’ve killed his own brother in the name of Agamemnon’s vengeance, a bloody vengeance that would serve no one. Because he had been the only father he’d ever known and remembered and he would have...
He’d have done anything for him.
Nearly had.
His family was not cursed. They were targeted. And those things were not the same.
Targeted for the sins of a great-grandfather that they had never met. Something they had never known about.
Their entire life had been twisted, his own uprooted.
He didn’t know anything about himself. And the raw horror that was bleeding through his chest made it impossible for him to think. He was nothing that he thought he was. Nothing. And here he was, trying to bind Agnes to him, and for what? As a Band-Aid to all the shortcomings inside of his own soul? It could not be endured. Not for Agnes.
He could not do this to her. The anger that was inside of his veins was a crushing, suffocating thing. And it would destroy him. It would destroy her along with it.
He wanted... He had been desperate for her. Desperate for her to teach him to love. Desperate to feel some kind of connection with another human, and he did. But he didn’t know how to give it back. His veins were full of poison. He had spent his life being conned. And he hated it. He hated all of this. He could not in good conscience keep her with him. Everything he was, was a lie. And everything he had believed in...
He had believed that Agamemnon had saved his life, that he must follow this arcane practice of being bound to him because of that. He had thought that Agamemnon had taught him all those things out of care, but it had never been that. The only father figure that he could remember had simply been manipulating him. Using him. He had not gotten lost in the wood; he had been stolen from the palace. His life had not been saved; he had been put in danger by the very man who professed to rescue him.
And from that had come Agnes. And his bonding her to him. And she was so grateful. The same way that he was to Agamemnon.
How could he ask her to form any feelings for him based on that?
All of it was a sick life. All of it.
How could he propose to her now? How could he promise her anything?
The simple truth was he could not.
He had to let her go. He had to tell her to leave.
To go to Paris or back to Ohio or wherever she wanted to be. He had to set her free. Because her feelings were born from an arcane practice that put too much weight on the person who was saved.
She had to have a chance. The chance he had never been given. To unlearn what he had been taught. To decide what manner of person he was for himself.
He could not use Agnes as a surrogate for a heart that he had never been able to develop because of the way that he had been shaped.
It was not fair.
For inside of him was anger, and it was nothing like the connection between Alexius and Tinley. Nothing at all.
Nothing at all.
And when he did not propose, he could see the disappointment on her face. But she didn’t know.
He was standing there going over the scorched, destroyed remains of his soul. And she didn’t know.
They went back to their room, and she began to undress. He stopped her. “Agnes, there is something I must say.”
She turned to face him, her expression full of hope. And it was his job to kill it, and she would not understand that it was a mercy. But he had to separate her from him. He owed her that. He could not keep her under the weight of this terrible responsibility.
“Agnes, I am going to get you an apartment. Wherever you would like. Anywhere in the entire world. And have you enroll at a university there.”
“What?”
“We talked about this. That you wished to be free.”
“That was before,” she said. “Surely you must realize that was before.”
“No. It must be now. It was easy for me to keep you. Because you would make a lovely Queen for me, and you must know that. You are beautiful. And you are strong. And as I said to you... The only woman that has ever been able to withstand all that I wish to give her. And giving that up is a very difficult thing.”
“Is that all?”
He nodded slowly, the lie pushing against the back of his throat. “That is all. I realized some things, and I...”
“What?”
“What I wanted from you, what I demanded of you with the fire that night... I don’t understand love, Agnes. I am what I was made.”
“Agamemnon cared for you...”
“Agamemnon lied to me,” he said. “I did not realize it until... Until we were standing there at the edge of the wood. And then I remembered. I remembered that he was there. I remembered that he lured me there to the wood. Yes, I remembered. And once I remembered... I realize that none of it was true. None of it. Down to you being bonded to me. Because it is a chain. A chain of lies, is it not? He stole me from my family. And he told me they didn’t care about me. And that was the man that I was raised by. No one loved me, Agnes.”
“I do,” she said.
“Because you were bound to me. And I know what that does to you. I know. Because it was what I had. It was what I had with him and...”
“It is not the same,” Agnes said. “If you really think I’m strong, if you really think that I know my mind, then how can you dismiss me like this?”
“I do it for your own good,” he growled.
“You do it for yours,” Agnes said. “Don’t you think that I see the fear in you?”
Her words were like a sword. Pointed, as they were in reality. “This has frightened you. And I know you’re sending me away because I frighten you too.”
“No,” he said.
“It is grief, Lazarus. It’s grief that you’re feeling. Because whether or not he deserved that, you did care for him. You did. And it causes you pain that he lied to you. That is normal.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t so simple.”
“Then tell me. Explain it to me so that I can understand. It might not be simple, but neither am I,” Agnes said. “I can understand you. Maybe better than you realize.”
“Nobody...”
“No one can understand you? Have you ever tried? Who knows you, Lazarus? Who knows you apart from me? Don’t tell me that I can’t understand. I am probably the person who can understand you the most. The best. Because we’ve talked. We have spent time together. And I care about you. I care about you beyond your connection to the royal family, beyond these missions. I care about you. So tell me. Tell me what frightens you, and I will... I will pick up my sword.”
“I’m not frightened of anything. I’m simply facing the reality of what is. If Agamemnon lied to me, he did not save me. If he did not save me, we were never bonded. And you deserve the chance to find out who you are for yourself.”
“I know. I already know. Lazarus, I have played a great many par
ts in my life. At the behest of my father. I have done what he has asked me to. I know when I’m longing. I know when I’m being lied to. This, what we have, what I feel, it’s real. It’s real and I know it. You do not need to teach me. Not in this. Perhaps I need to teach you.”
“No. That is not your job. You do not...”
“Stop telling me how strong you think I’m not. If you have one downfall with me, that is it. I am not the girl you found in that alley.” And then suddenly, she stopped. “Maybe I am. Maybe I am the girl that you found in that alley. And I was stronger then too. Because I survived. I survived that day, and yes I had you. But I had survived every day up until that point. And I may not have done so with a sword, but I did survive. And you keep telling me you don’t need me. You keep telling me that you can fight without me. But what if you can’t. What if I am a strength you didn’t know you had. What if I am more than your shield maiden. What if I’m your heart?”
“You must go,” he said. “There can be no discussion. I am not cutting you out of my life, Agnes. I am going to continue to take care of you...”
“I would love to tell you no. I would love to not accept. But the fact of the matter is, I cannot afford that. I cannot afford to live without your protection. And those things are physical, so I can’t deny them. I must have shelter. I must be able to learn a trade if I’m to be on my own. So I must take what you have offered. Maybe you need me in ways that you cannot see.”
He turned away from her, his heart a slow, dull thud in his ears. “I will have you sent wherever you wish.”
“So that’s it? I don’t get to choose?”
“You get to choose. Wherever you wish to go.”
“Paris then,” she said. “Send me to Paris.”
With a wave of his hand he dismissed her. “It is done.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT HAD BEEN a week since he had sent Agnes away. A week since he had seen her. A week since he had held her in his arms.
For good reason.
He had hardly been able to sort through that dread that had filled his chest when he’d realized the truth of his background. Since then he had spoken to Alexius about it at length. But they had not talked at all of Agnes.
Tinley had taken to giving him long looks that spoke of her deep disapproval. But he could not please Tinley. In truth, he could not please himself. It was possible he could not please anyone.
He was okay with that. Everyone else would have to learn to be.
It wasn’t until dinner on the night that marked exactly a week since Agnes left, that his brother finally addressed the situation.
“And is Agnes returning to us?”
“No,” he said.
He had set her up with a lovely apartment in Paris, and had hired someone to guide her in enrollment in a university there. Last he heard she had not chosen what she was to study. But then, she was angry at him, so it was entirely possible she wasn’t telling anyone what she was thinking because she didn’t want it to filter back to him. But she... She loved him. And there was nothing he could do with that.
“I see. And why is that?”
“Agnes needs to go and experience life on her own. There are things about our relationship that you don’t know...”
“Not true,” Tinley said. “I told him everything Agnes told me. We have no secrets, my husband and I.”
“Great,” he said, his tone dry.
“I have told you what I learned about my past. That I was taken. Our family is not cursed. We were targeted. It is a very different thing. And I...”
The words that had been about to come out of his mouth were foreign to his mind. He had not ever thought them before. And he hadn’t known he was about to speak them.
“The one person that I spent my life trusting lied to me,” he said. “Not about what happened in our history. But about the part that I was to play. He had already set about exacting revenge on our family. He is the reason that Dionysus was killed.”
“I know,” Alexius said, his voice rough. “And I know that this may make no sense to you, but there is something of a comfort in that for me, because I was sure that... That it was something in me. Something that I had done.”
“Aren’t you both a pair,” Tinley said. “Look at you. Sitting there and comparing the darkness inside of you. It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Any more than it’s yours.” She directed the last part to Lazarus. “It isn’t your fault, and Agnes knows that. Agnes loves you.”
“That isn’t it,” he said. “I don’t blame myself for the things that were set in motion before I was born. But what I do blame myself for is... I trusted the wrong person. How can I ever trust anything inside of myself ever again?”
And that was the truth of it. How could he ever trust his heart? How could he ever trust his feelings? Agnes said that she loved him, and he was... There was something in him that was desperate for that. That clawed rapidly at his chest, wanting to get free. Wanting to touch her. Wanting to be near her, to be consumed by it. But his feelings were not trustworthy. They told lies. And what could that mean for her? He did not worry about his own pain.
Do you not?
He thought of Agnes, beautiful and bright. And he thought of how he had sent her away. On his request. At his choice. In his timing. What if she decided to leave one day? What if he began to believe that love between them, and it turned out that it was not so? It was simply her own inexperience. It was simply...
“There are many people in this world who lie,” Tinley said. “My own mother long acted as if there was something irrevocably broken in me. I understand what it is to not be certain of your place in the world because of what the people around you have said. But when someone comes along who says they love you, who has shown you they love you... Has she not shown you, Lazarus? Has she not been there for you? Agnes has been loyal and brave and true. It is more than words. It’s more than feelings. It’s eight years of action. She loves you.”
“But...”
“And you’re afraid. You’re afraid of that pain you felt when you lost your family. But ask yourself this, do you feel any better now?”
He looked at his soon-to-be sister-in-law. “I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know how to feel anything beyond... I fear I don’t understand love.”
“If Agnes’s life were in danger, would you risk yours to help her?”
“Every time,” he said.
“If she was cold and she needed something to keep warm, would you take the cloak off your back for her?”
“I would,” he said.
“If another woman wanted to share your bed, but you knew that it would hurt her...”
“I want no one else.”
“What do you think love is?”
“I’ve seen the two of you together. There is a softness there, a sweetness that I cannot understand.”
“We’ve grown into that,” Alex said.
“It’s true,” Tinley said. “At first it was all very frightening. Very painful and sharp. And sometimes the sharpness is still there. But we have grown to trust in this love. And at first it’s hard to do that. Love is not comfortable when it’s breaking through the barriers that you’ve put up around your heart. In fact, then love can be very, very painful.”
Well, he had the pain.
“But what do you do? How do you guarantee that everything will be okay?”
“You can’t,” Alex said. “It’s impossible to guarantee that anything will be okay. The Dark Wood is still there, and there are still monsters. That is the way of the world. But being in love, having someone to walk alongside you, it makes it not half so terrifying. When you can find the person who makes the sharp things worth it, then you hang on to them.”
“You may not trust your own heart, Lazarus,” Alex said slowly. “But do you trust Agnes?”
Agnes. W
ho was everything bright and brilliant and good. How could he not trust her? It was fear causing him to hide like this. Fear and he knew it. And as Agnes had said before she had gone, a deep underestimating of her strength. Which was simply not fair. Not when she had done nothing but swear loyalty to him. Unending and true.
And then love.
And what had he sworn to her? Nothing. If he felt like he wasn’t known, it was because he had never let his guard down.
And what was it that Alex had said? That love, when breaking through those walls, was nothing but extremely painful. He believed it. He believed it because he felt it. It was not her. It was not her that lacked strength.
It was him. Because there was more to strength than being hard. More to strength than being a mountain. It was the softness, the vulnerability that Agnes possessed, that was where the real strength lay.
Hadn’t she said just that? What if she was his heart?
What if she was his heart.
And he had torn his heart out, had torn his heart out and sent it to Paris. And for what? To try to keep himself safe. Safe from more pain. Safe from betrayal. For hadn’t it been that betrayal that had caused him to change course?
That... That slap in the face of realizing that he’d been wrong.
Are you so weak? She stood there and said she accepted you regardless. She always has. And you turned away because of fear.
“And what if I went to get her?” Lazarus asked.
“Go,” Tinley said, at the same time as Alexius said, “You should.”
“I want to get to her as quickly as possible.”
“I have a private jet,” Alexius said. “You should take that.”
“I won’t argue.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AGNES WAS ALL out of tears. That was what she told herself, every day when she got up in the morning and pored over the catalog for the university she was supposed to start soon. Every afternoon when she went for a walk around the park and then the museums. Every evening when she went and got some bread or crepes and sat by the Eiffel Tower as she had done when she’d been sixteen.
