Page 45 of Between Two Kings
She is lying.
Tem’s head snapped to Caspen’s. He said it casually, as if he were stating a rather boring fact. But that fact was everything to Tem. How do you know?
He didn’t reply. Perhaps his interest had already waned. But Tem’s interest was very much piqued, so she asked once more, “Then why did you?”
It was rude to repeat the same question mere seconds later. But Evelyn still hadn’t answered it. “I was…misinformed.”
Tem blinked. So did Leo. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Beside her, Caspen’s hand touched her knee. Tem knew what he was saying: Relax. But she was about to get the answer to a question she’d wondered about for far too long, and she could not be relaxed about it.
“On the morning Leo and I were supposed to run away together, I received a letter.”
Tem straightened. Caspen’s grip tightened. “What kind of letter?”
Evelyn turned to Leo. “Did you not tell her?”
Tem turned to Leo too. “Tell me what?”
A tenuous silence fell. In it, Leo’s jaw twitched. When he didn’t answer, Evelyn said, “Leo wrote me a letter telling me he no longer wished to be with me.”
Now Tem was truly confused. As far as she knew, Leo had waited for Evelyn in the graveyard behind the church on the morning they were meant to leave. When she hadn’t shown up, he had been the heartbroken one. Was that all a lie? Had Leo played her? Doubt curled in her stomach. His pitiful story about Evelyn had tugged at her heartstrings. Such a tale would have swayed anyone. Now, for a terrifying moment, Tem wondered if it had all been false.
“Why would he do that? He loved you.”
“I didn’t.”
The words were spoken by Leo, and Evelyn bristled the moment he said him. At her reaction, he clarified.
“I didn’t write the letter.”
Tem frowned. “Then who did?”
“My father.”
The pieces clicked slowly into place. Tem remembered what Maximus had said to her in the foyer after she discovered the bloodletting: I have corrected my son’s mistakes before. I will not hesitate to do so again. The letter was his way of correcting Leo’s mistake, of ensuring he didn’t end up with a lowly village girl. But something about Evelyn’s story didn’t sit right with Tem.
In the silence that followed, she tried to pinpoint why she felt so angry. It was irrelevant whether Maximus had been the one to write the letter. What was unfathomable to Tem was the fact that Evelyn would have left Leo after reading it. If she and Leo were so in love, nothing should have been able to drive her away. Tem knew if Leo had broken up with her via letter, she never would have accepted it. She couldn’t understand how Evelyn could have taken such a note at face value—not when her entire relationship was at stake. At the very least, she should have shown up to the graveyard to hear it from Leo in person.
Before Tem could say as much, Evelyn finished wistfully, “When I got the letter, I could think of nothing else to do but to flee.”
Something flickered in Leo’s eyes. Doubt.
Tem’s eyes shifted to Caspen, whose expression was unreadable. Sometime in the last few minutes, the claw had begun to throb again. It was beginning to make her lightheaded. She clenched her fists in an attempt to focus, asking, “So why didn’t you come back?”
Evelyn blinked slowly. She placed her hand gently on Leo’s arm. Her power was quiet but no less present. Tem could feel it in the way she watched her every move at the table—sense it in the way her eyes flicked to Leo whenever Tem looked at him. She was watching—waiting—protecting her king.
“Are you implying something?” she asked quietly.
“You said the letter is why you left,” Tem said just as quietly, keeping her voice steady despite the erratic pulses between her legs. “But you didn’t say why you stayed away. So why didn’t you come back?”
Across from her, Leo took a sip of his whiskey. Caspen didn’t move.
“I was heartbroken, of course,” Evelyn said. “I didn’t think Leo wanted to see me ever again. As you can understand, I was devastated.”
“No,” Tem said. “I don’t understand.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “What don’t you understand?”
