A Thousand Heartbeats

I told myself that the noise I’d heard had been the rain. It was something hitting the mountain, or a tree falling, or anything else really. It would have made perfect sense considering the situation we were in. But every time Lennox smiled or touched me or even looked at me a certain way, I would hear it again.

The sound of a thousand heartbeats.

In the echo of it, I heard so many other things more clearly. I heard my love for my brother, so pure and hopeful, and even my love for my father, fractured and slow, but still there. I heard my love for Noemi, piercingly sweet and sustained. And my love for Rhett. It sounded soft, not encompassing in any way. There was a tinge of obligation to it, which surprised me.

But what was louder than all of that was the painful certainty that I’d finally felt the love I’d read about in hundreds of books, the overwhelming and crushing weight of true love. And it was attached to the one person I could never have.

I swallowed. “I need to tell you something.” I was playing with the hole in my dress again. “But I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

He bent down, coming into my view. “At this point, I don’t think either of us can keep secrets. Besides, I’m still planning to kill you, so you might as well say it while you can.”

He smiled hesitantly, and I did, too. Look at those eyes. This was not the face of a killer.

“After we spoke in the dungeon, I was curious. So I went to the library and got the records of your father’s trial.”

“What?” He took me and turned me to face him. “There are records?”

I nodded. “It was very brief. I won’t say any more if you’d rather not hear.”

“No! Please, tell me. What did it say? What happened?”

I could feel myself trembling, afraid of the aftermath of this confession. “The notes suggest he was calm on trial. He didn’t give an age or disclose anything about his family. I think he was trying to keep you a secret, to protect you.”

Lennox looked at the ground.

“Should I stop?”

He swallowed. “No. I want to hear.”

“He also said ‘We have no last names’ in the notes, so they called him Jago the Lone.”

Lennox was toying with the hem of my dress. “That’s true. We stopped using them in the name of unity. If someone comes to camp and has a name already in use, it’s changed. There’s only one of anyone in Vosino.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. “He . . . he pled guilty to attempting to assassinate my father. The jury wanted him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

Lennox’s hand tightened around the edge of my dress. I could sense this was anguish; he wasn’t going to hurt me.

“The notes say that my father interceded so he would have a swift beheading.”

A shiver went through him at the thought.

“I’m sorry. That’s . . . that’s all I know.”

Lennox nodded, breathing heavily for a moment. “Kawan likes to send us on Commissions to prove our loyalty to the cause. Going to the palace was my father’s. I don’t know why he went that far; it wasn’t like him at all. I have so many questions I can’t ask Kawan, and now I can’t ask my father. I guess . . . I’ll never know.” He swallowed again and looked up at me. “Your father really changed his sentence?”

“My father pronounced it, but it looks like it came at my mother’s suggestion.”

His lips were trembling. “He nearly took her husband, and still . . .”

I had hoped to bring Lennox peace; it would be the only gift I could give him. Soon, the rain would stop, and we would run, and everything would collapse back into chaos. Before it was all over, I just wanted him to have this.

“I lied to you,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I wouldn’t do it over again. If I had another chance, I’d get her out.” He looked up at me. “Your mother . . . she looked at me and said, ‘You’re just a child. You shouldn’t have the weight of this on you for the rest of your life. Make someone else come in.’ I . . . I expected her to plead for her life, but instead she pleaded for mine. She knew what was coming, and I could see she was heartbroken over it. Still, in the end, I was the one she wanted to save.”

His breaths came quickly now, painful and sharp. “I didn’t even know her name, and she refused to give us any information that might make it easier to hurt you. She cried and mourned, but she didn’t cave. Annika, you are so much like her.”

I’d heard those words thousands of times. I never believed them as much as I did right now.

“I stepped . . .” He had to stop and wipe at his tears, his face red. “I made her get on her knees, because I was about her height then. She did it without fighting. She said, ‘Oh, Escalus. Oh, Annika.’ Those were her last words. I thought she was praying in a language I didn’t know.”

And then I was crying, too. That was all I could ever know, all there was left to tell. Now I would simply cherish that she loved me to her last breath.

“I need you to know, it was fast,” he said urgently. “She felt nothing, and I handled her so carefully. And I need you to know . . .” He was bawling now, falling apart. “I need you to know I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I have to carry it forever, just like she said. And I deserve it . . . but even so, you have to know, even if no one else can, that I regret it every single day. I wouldn’t do it again, Annika. Even if it meant living the rest of my life in a different kind of hell, I wouldn’t, and I need you to know that.

“I’m so sorry.” He buried his head in his hands, and I saw all too clearly this had destroyed him. He’d made a joke before about being haunted. But he really, truly was.

And so, it was easy then—to see the best of my mother in myself, and to give Lennox the one thing he needed more than anything.

I put my hand on his cheek, expecting him to recoil. He didn’t. I waited with my hand there as he wiped at tears, looking ashamed of them, though he had no need to be. He’d been forced to hold this inside, alone, for years.

“Lennox. Lennox, look at me. Please.”

He took a moment, catching his breath. Finally, he came up, his brilliant blue eyes rimmed in red. I had to imagine mine looked as rough as his.

“I forgive you. Fully. Freely. I forgive you.”

He sat there, looking into my eyes for a long time. Oh, I was tangled in the worst way, wasn’t I?

“I lied again,” he whispered, his gaze open and clear. “I’m not going to kill you. I didn’t want to in the first place, no matter what your people have done to mine. No matter what happened to my father. I’m so tired of killing, Annika.”

I shook my head. “Oh dear. You’ve done it now. No more secrets for you.”

He smiled. “A fair price, I suppose. But you needn’t worry. I won’t tell anyone anything you’ve said anyway.”

“Thank you,” I replied, finally letting my hand drop.

He sat up a little taller, shoving his hair back. “What about you? Are you still going to kill me?”

I looked at this boy—who had somehow, against my wishes, taken full possession of my heart—and sighed. “Well, it is an awful lot of work.”

He smiled, turning so he could face the fire. His arm was against mine. “I agree. Nothing but work.”

“Princesses don’t work. Not like that, anyway.”

I listened as his breaths slowed, finally steadying. I could even feel how his shoulders were slouched in relief next to mine. It had to be a bittersweet feeling, letting all those secrets out.

I stared ahead, but I could feel his eyes on me. I wondered what he found when he looked at me.

It didn’t matter. Just like Lennox, I had questions I could never ask.