Step 7c: ...and don't let him break your heart

No, no, no! Saffron couldn't have escaped, not now, not when everything was already going so badly. Ivelle spun on her heel, frantically scanning the room for any sign – any hint – of her ex-husband's whereabouts.

Eirifold caught her arm.

"He's a few rooms down, being watched by some guards. I thought it was inhumane to keep him trapped in the dog crate for days at a time and wanted to give him more room to run around. I didn't set him free."

Ivelle swayed on her feet, clutching her hair in relief. Eirifold studied her, worry filling his dark eyes.

"Ivelle, are you quite all right?" He tilted her chin up to study her face, frowning as his eyes landed on the bags under her eyes. "When was the last time you slept?"

"Don't"—Ivelle jabbed a finger at his chest, trying to stifle a sudden yawn—"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Talk to me like you're a nice person. Don't!"

"Are you drunk?"

Was she?

She'd barely slept in three days. She vaguely remembered Ash once telling her sleep deprivation was roughly the equivalent to being drunk when it came to one's actions and decision-making abilities.

Poor Ash. He was probably going to die, and here she was, floundering like a lost fish, when she should have been at his side comforting him.

No. She would finish what she'd come here to do: she would confront Eirifold about what Lillian had said. Then she would return to Ash.

Ivelle yawned. With what seemed like a supreme amount of effort, she forced her eyelids open. "Lillian," she ground out, "told me something interesting recently. Do you want to hear it?"

"I suspect you'll tell me, whether I want to hear or not."

"She told me you murdered her brother."

Eirifold let out a short, humorless laugh. "Did she, now?"

"Is it true?"

"I think," Eirifold said, "I'm going to need more alcohol for this conversation."

He started toward his wine cabinet.

"Don't you dare."

Ivelle hurried forward to block Eirifold's path. Perhaps due to his inebriated state, the prince wasn't able to dodge in time, and his foot landed on her big toe. With a hiss of pain, Ivelle grabbed his sleeve, imbalancing him further. They careened into Eirifold's massive four-poster, toppling onto his red-and-gold comforter with a disgruntled, "Oof!"

He stared at her sadly from across the bed. Ivelle thought about scrambling to her feet, but she was too exhausted, and the bed was too comfortable.

Instead, she propped her head on her hand. "Why did you kill Lillian's brother?" she asked, refusing to be deterred.

He sighed. "Do you want the Edge-lordy 'because I'm a terrible person and a cold-blooded killer' type of answer, or do you want a more watered-down version?"

"I want the truth."

He looked away. Ivelle tensed, preparing for him to reply with something self-deprecating and evasive and inevitably unhelpful.

Instead, he rolled onto his back. Silence filled the room, a suffocating silence that seemed to weigh on the air. If not for the distant chirp of sparrows and gurgle of the fountain just outside, Ivelle would have felt almost smothered.

"Lillian's brother was named Jasper," Eirifold said at last. He spoke slowly, as though dredging up past memories physically pained him. "I had known him since we were little, although not very well. He arrived at the palace after his parents died, and we became friends. He was still reeling from his parents' deaths, so I tried to find ways to distract him. At first, I didn't realize my mum and dad were hoping to use him as their pawn – I thought they were just keeping him here out of kindness.

"As if 'kindness' was in my parents' vocabulary.

"Eventually, to placate the Castrenian dissenters, the king and queen declared that Jasper could go back to being prince of Castrena – really more of a puppet, under tutelage of a Castrenian nobleman loyal to the crown – and I would marry Lady Lillian to keep Jasper in line. Jasper was horrified. He said the whole purpose of coming to the palace was to protect Lillian from Estrellan politics. I agreed to help him escape the palace so he could go into hiding with his sister. I was young, and an idiot, and it all seemed like a bit of a game at the time. We made it to the city before I did something stupid that gave us away.

"The guards dragged us back to the palace. My parents forced me to tell them what we were doing in the city. They confined Jasper to his rooms – or so they said. That was the last time I ever saw him." His voice shook. "The next day, my dad ordered me to go hunting with him. At that point, I still wanted to impress him. To not be a failure, especially after how angry he'd been the day before. I shot a deer with one of my arrows, a young stag. It was the first time I'd ever actually hit anything. It... it was horrible. I saw him thrashing around in the underbrush, unable to walk. We followed him. My father told me to be a man and finish the job, so I cut his throat as fast as I could.

"After I was finished, my father got the smuggest look on his face. You have done well, he said. And I hope this teaches you never to challenge my authority again.

"What do you mean? I asked.

"I suppose there's no way you could have recognized him.

"Recognized who?

"Jasper of Castrena. After he challenged our authority, your mother and I decided it wasn't worth keeping him around. We turned him into an animal to be hunted and killed."

"No!" Ivelle gasped.

Horror coursed through her, cold and potent. For a moment, she sat, frozen with disgust at what the king had done, at the trauma it must have inflicted upon a young Eirifold.

No wonder he hadn't wanted his younger brother anywhere near the palace.

No wonder he'd thought the best option for avoiding being a part of his family's machinations was pretending he'd gone mad.

Eirifold stared at the ceiling, his expression very far away.

"It keeps me awake at night, thinking about his last moments," he murmured. "Remembering how his eyes looked at me with such terror. Did he recognize me? Was he hoping I would see him for who he was, and not end his life? Or did the spell strip him of his humanity, make him just like any other deer? I want to believe it's the latter, that he was at least ignorant of our connection when he died... but ever since meeting your ex-husband I've been terrified that's not true. Terrified he knew it was his best friend who killed him, and he was unable to communicate in his last moments..."

Ivelle stared down at the gold and scarlet bedspread. The tiny embroidered stags that danced across the comforter suddenly took on an almost sinister aspect. Had Eirifold chosen this bedspread on purpose, in memory of his friend? Or was it another thing the king of Estrella had foisted upon him against his will, a painful reminder of the crime he'd been forced to commit? Or perhaps it was neither – perhaps his parents had simply arranged for him to have it, without thinking about how it would affect him, maliciously indifferent to the very end.

Eirifold was still staring at the ceiling, his eyes very sad.

Ivelle finally found her voice. "I... don't presume to know what Jasper was thinking in his last moments," she said. "And I don't expect my saying anything can make things any better. But from my limited outsider's perspective, you're not a bad person, and it wasn't your fault. Your dad shouldn't have put you in that position. What he did was fricking messed up." She reached across the bed to lay a hand on his. "He tricked you into killing your friend!"

"A smarter person wouldn't have been tricked."

"You were just a child! Also – how on earth were you supposed to guess he'd been turned into a deer? It's pretty much the last thing a sane person would guess!" She frowned as another thought struck her. "Did you tell Lady Lillian you'd killed her brother without giving her the whole story?"

"I've told Lillian a great many things throughout the years, most of which I later regretted or was too drunk to properly remember," he said unhappily.

Ivelle shot him an exasperated look. "You must remember some of it."

"I do... unfortunately." He sighed. "When she came to the palace, I was determined to set things right. To protect her like Jasper would've protected her, if he'd lived. Except, like the stupid teenager I was, I made a mess of things. I didn't love her, but for years I tried my hardest to give her everything she wanted to compensate for the fact that my parents had made her life so horrible. I wanted Mariel to be nice to her too, so I made a bet with her as to which one of us could treat her the nicest and win her favor. And I was always powerless to save Lillian from the things that really mattered, like my parents' cruelty.

"One night, a few years ago, I couldn't take it anymore. I got drunk and told her about the bet, told her I didn't love her, told her I didn't deserve anything from her because I'd killed her brother. Lillian was understandably hurt by the fact that all our interactions had been a lie and upset about my role in her brother's death. We've barely spoken since."

"I see."

Ivelle's eyes wandered from the open window, where hummingbirds flitted about, to the open crate that had formerly housed Lord Saffron.

"Maybe it's time to have a proper conversation with Lillian," she said at last. "Not a conversation when you're half drunk and can barely string two words together. And definitely not a conversation where you're drowning in self-loathing and moaning about what a terrible person you are. I'm talking about a proper conversation. One where you're fully sober and willing to be honest with her, like you've been honest with me today. You're no longer teenagers. You're mature adults, and you're both good people. Surely, you can resolve your differences rationally."

"And what if she still hates me for what I've done?"

"Then at least you tried to properly make amends instead of half-assing it like a coward."

"What a way with words you have," Eirifold sighed.

"At least you have a chance of reconciling. It's not like either of you have done anything unforgivable."

Ivelle glowered at the dog crate.

"I've been meaning to ask..." said Eirifold. "What really went down between you and... er... your doggy ex? Seems like I'm not the only one with a lot of unresolved baggage."

Ivelle drummed her fingers on the mattress frame. "Perfectly logical baggage, I assure you," she said tartly. "The bastard killed my mum!"

"Somehow I suspect there's more to the story."

Ivelle hesitated. But he had been honest with her – or at least, she was fairly sure he had. And she had literally just given him a lecture about the power of an honest conversation. It would be a bit hypocritical for her to back out of answering him now, even if she wasn't sure there was much point to him knowing the full story.

"Fine," she sighed. "I shall relay to you my tale of woe."

She ran her hands through her hair. It was even more tangled than usual; she'd been so in a tizzy over Ash, it had been days since she'd had a chance to wash it.

"I actually loved Lord Saffron once. Isn't that sad? He was like ninety years old – okay more like forty – a perfect silver fox – and I was eighteen. Young and stupid. My mum invited him over to our house for tea to discuss a business proposal, and we immediately hit it off.

"I didn't realize until later that his feelings were fake, that my mum had been slipping a love potion into his tea since he started to court me. When I found out, I was furious. My mum had made him fall in love and marry me, just so she could steal the contents of his treasury. It wasn't the first time she'd done something like this, although not to this degree. I told her she could stuff it, that this was the final straw. That I would never help her.

"Then I went to Saffron. Somehow, I convinced myself that Saffron would still love me even after he stopped taking the potion... because how could a man whose actions had been so sweet until that moment simply toss me aside? I built him up in my head, thinking the bastard was the key to escaping my mum and living the life I wanted to live. With his support and his money, I could start a small carpentry business. Live a life where I was building new things, not breaking them.

"I told Saffron everything – the whole truth, didn't leave anything out. I told him who my mother was and what she was trying to do. I apologized for her actions. I made him stop drinking the love potions my mom was slipping to him. He thanked me warmly for my honesty and reassured me that, love potions or not, his feelings were real, and I was still the love of his life. I told him about my mother's plan to sneak into the treasury that night, and that we should head over to stop her. He promised to banish her from his fiefdom, so I would be free of her forever and could live life as I wanted.

"That night, we intercepted my mother trying to break into the treasury. Except, instead of banishing my mum, Saffron's men shot her through the chest with an arrow. It happened so fast, I couldn't do anything, I couldn't even scream for her to run. I asked him how he could do such a thing, and he laughed in my face. Be glad I'm not shooting you through the heart too, he said. No one makes a fool of me and gets away with it.

"What kills me is just how the bloody bastard deceived me. Played with me like some stupid fool, even after I bared my heart to him. But what kills me even more is that my mom was right, and that I walked right into Saffron's trap. I'm the whole reason she died. She was a shitty mum, but she didn't deserve to die like that. And you know what the last thing I said to her was?" Ivelle swiped at her eyes with her sleeve. "The last thing I ever told her was how ashamed I was of her life choices, and how I wished she'd either go do something productive with her life, or jump off a cliff."

Eirifold laid a hand on her shoulder.

"I thought I had it bad," he said ruefully. "We're both just a pile of regrets, aren't we?"

"At least you can"–Ivelle yawned–"shrink down your pile of regrets. By talking to Lillian."

His eyes slid away from hers. "I thought that carpentry shop at your address was just a front for your villainous schemes," he said evasively. "I didn't realize it actually meant something to you."

Ivelle decided to overlook the change of subject... at least, for now. "Of course it does," she said, affronted. "Why ever would you think it wouldn't mean anything?"

"It's just that you've never said much about...  carpentry stuff when we've been together."

"Well, excuse me if I've been too busy worrying about your getting poisoned to comment on the clever design of your secret passage doorway, or the construction of your bedframe." Ivelle prodded the headboard. "These decorative finials must've taken some poor sod weeks to carve right, probably too many weeks if I had to guess, because he didn't leave enough time to properly put on the finish. See how the paint in these corners is sloppy and starting to peel? He didn't sand it properly before applying the paint coat, and probably thought he could get away with no one noticing since the finish was so gaudy–"

Eirifold held up a hand. "Okay, okay. I was wrong to question your carpentry skills."

"What would you be, if you didn't have to be king?" Ivelle asked, propping herself on her elbow to look at him. "And please don't say 'wine connoisseur'."

His head tilted thoughtfully to the side. "I always thought it would be nice to be a painter or sculptor," he mused. "It's the sort of trade my father considers terribly un-manly, but I suspect I'd be rather good at it."

Ivelle yawned again, suddenly overcome with exhaustion. She had, after all, been awake an ungodly number of hours. It seemed her lack of sleep was finally catching up to her. "You can"—she stifled another yawn–"start by fixing the bloody paint job on this sorry excuse for—mm, 'scuse me—a bedframe." Her eyes fluttered shut.

"Take a nap," said Eirifold's amused voice from beside her. "You sound like you need one."

It couldn't hurt to shut her eyes for a teensy bit, could it? "Just a couple minutes," Ivelle mumbled. "I just need... to close my eyes... for a few..."

She was asleep before she could finish her sentence.

~*~

It was, in fact, many hours before Ivelle rejoined the world of the living. When she finally woke, late afternoon sunlight was streaming through the windows, and cicadas were buzzing a sleepy song of contentment outside.

"SHIT!" Ivelle gasped, scrambling upright. "What time is it?"

"About five in the afternoon," said Eirifold.

"I gotta go! Ash is sick, he needs me."

"Your crow is sick?" Eirifold glanced at her worriedly. "Do you need to be excused from performing tomorrow?"

"Is that allowed?"

"My parents have been known to behead jesters who cancel at the last minute, so it's not recommended, but I could probably find you a safe hiding place if you want to bail now. Maybe you can stay with Myklas –"

"No," said Ivelle. "No, I'll come up with something."

Eirifold snapped his fingers. "I know just the thing. We shall have to rehearse it fast, though. I have dinner plans in two hours."

"Dinner plans?"

"Yes." He smiled hesitantly. "Lillian agreed to come for dinner tonight. We're going to talk about everything that happened like rational and mature adults. And I promise not to drink a drop of alcohol."

~*~

Word count: 39,897

Sorry if this chapter seems a little rough - I was rushing to finish since this is the last time I'll probably be able to update for a little while. Busy couple of weeks!