Page 54 of The Midnight Arrow
Realization hit.
“Oh,” I said. A flash of bitterness rose in me. I laughed, but it sounded like a choke. “You’re no better than the rest of them, are you?”
Lorik’s expression was pained. Again, he tried to step forward before he remembered himself. “It’s not like that—I need you to believe me. Just let me explain.”
“Then explain,” I said. “And don’t you dare lie.”
“The arrow…the injury…the poisoning…it was all planned,” Lorik said, the words released in a rush, like a purging. “From the very beginning.”
I stared at him, hardly registering his words. My heart thudded in my ears until I could barely hear anything else.
“Butplease, Marion, know that I never acted the way I did…I never pretended when I was with you,” Lorik said quickly, his words a dizzying rush.
“All you did was pretend,” I said, my tone hollow. “Were you truthful about anything?”
“About the way I feel about you, yes!” he urged. “But you have to understand this is bigger than me. The entire Below is threatened, Marion. This wasn’t about what I wanted. This was my duty, to help my people, myfamily.”
I looked away from him, to glance into the Black Veil. I wondered how far the portal was from my cottage. Was it near where I’d found him, leaning against a tree, an arrow in his shoulder?
“The arrow was planned. I ordered one of my huntsman to strike me with it,” he confessed. “I knew your healer’s oath. I took advantage of that. Even the poison was taken into account…I knew you would send me on my way if it was a mere flesh wound. I needed to…”
“You needed to get close to me so that I would do what you wanted,” I finished for him, the ugly truth tumbling from my lips. “You manipulated me. You tricked me. You used me. You made me like you so that in the end, I would do what you wanted.”
Lorik’s eyes closed briefly, his features scrunching up, his breaths coming fast.
“The shadevine queen, right?” I guessed. “That’s what you want. That’s what they always want.”
Lorik met my eyes, that glow illuminating the sprinkling of rain between us.
“Not the queen,” he murmured. “I need the hive heart.”
I choked out a laugh of disbelief, and it sounded like a sob.
“The heart. Without it, the queen will abandon the hive. All her glowflies will die without the heat. All the shadevines will wither in the garden,” I told him, numbness beginning to take root.
“I know,” he murmured quietly. “But many will die without it.”
“Why not just steal it?”
“The heart needs to be freely given,” he rasped.
“Why?” I asked, my tone chipped like ice.
“Our most powerful Kelvarian sorceress demands it for her spell,” Lorik told me, his shoulders sagging slightly, his wings dipping into the wet, mushy soil beneath him. “The hive heart must be freely given.”
“So that’s why you needed the deception. That’s why you pretended to?—”
“I never pretended, Marion,” Lorik snapped. “I was disappointed that it had to be you.”
I flinched.
“Not in that way. Fuck!” Lorik cursed, bringing a hand up to his horn. “I was agonizing over what needed to be done. Forweeks. But you are the only one—theonly one—who possesses a shadevine hive. No other healers’ guild, no glowfly keeper within two week’s flying distance has one. Because, believe me, I searched. It was a miracle that you have one. Ithadto be you. And I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to betray you, Marion, but this was the only choice. The only way to save my people.”
I turned from him.
“Marion!”
He thought I was leaving, but I only paced a short distance away before I rounded back.