The Glass Queen (The Forest of Good and Evil #2) - Gena Showalter Page 0,57

secure a better future for my people and myself.”

“Because you feel guilty about your failures in your other lives?” she asked matter-of-factly.

I narrowed my eyes and nodded, my ire growing at her accurate reading of the situation.

“That’s understandable.” She tasted the potatoes and closed her eyes, the barest moan escaping her. “Do I taste cream? With potatoes? This might be the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth. In Fleur, they are only ever mixed with herbs.”

Still she moved so gracefully. My blood heated, a battle raging inside my head. One side wanted to storm from the tent. The other expected to walk around the table and crouch before her, so I could cup her cheeks in my palms and draw her face to mine...so I could press my lips against hers and taste her.

I squeezed my fork, inadvertently bending the handle.

Leaning back in my seat, I asked, “What was your first thought about me, when we first met?” A topic sure to cool me.

Circles of pink painted her cheeks. “What was your first thought about me?”

That blush... “Did young Ashleigh consider me handsome?” She made a choking sound, and I knew. She had. Tone growing lighter, I said, “I thought you sad and adorable...until memories of our past lives invaded.” Just like that, the lightness evaporated. “I realized who you were.”

She traced her fork through the carrots, gaze downcast. “I did consider you handsome. At first. Then I realized how cruel you were. The way you glared at me... I was just a child, Saxon. I’d lost my mother only days before, and I had no idea why this winged warrior kept glaring daggers at me.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, shamed. “I admit Queen Charlotte’s funeral wasn’t my finest hour. I...apologize for the way I treated you.” I gritted out the words. I meant them, but saying them to an enemy still rankled. “I didn’t view you as a child that day, but a centuries-old witch who liked to burn down my homes and murder my families.”

Another flinch. “The first time Craven and Leonora met, did he enter her home and decide she would move in with him?” she asked, fingering the ring now hidden beneath the dress.

I went still. “That is a very specific question. Why do you wish to know? Did you relive one of her memories?”

Her gaze darted guiltily. “I’m curious, that’s all, and I’d like a personal accounting. History books claim he abducted her.”

I snorted. “She went with him happily, even against the advice of her parents.”

“Then why did the two go to war?”

“She went with him happily,” I repeated. “They fell in love, or some warped version of it, then parted, then warred.”

“Why am I not like you? Why do I have no memory of the past lives?”

The words Noel had uttered a few weeks—eons ago—played in my head. Exactly like you, but vastly different.

I hadn’t understood then, and I didn’t understand now.

“Your mother,” I said, proceeding carefully. “Did your father ever find her murderer?”

Ashleigh’s eyes blazed before becoming two wide, watery emerald wounds, just as they’d been at the funeral. “N-no.”

I bit my tongue, going quiet for a moment. I didn’t want to push, but she needed to face the reality of our situation. “Do you ever wonder why someone decided to stab their beloved queen inside the warlock’s chambers?”

“Yes.” Another croak. “Every day.”

“Your father told me you passed out just before the murder occurred. You passed out in the garden, too, only to awaken in seconds and attack me. Yesterday, you passed out in the tub, awoke within seconds and conversed with me as if you were Leonora.”

“I... I was talking in my sleep. People do that. It’s a thing that happens.”

I glared at her, daring her to look past the veil of innocence draped over her thoughts, shielding her from a terrible past. “But what if I’m telling the truth, Ashleigh? What then?”

10

Hark! Heed my warning,

or die by morning.

Ashleigh

I replayed Saxon’s question in my head a million times, but I never offered him an answer. I didn’t know how to answer. Had I done and said things to others unconscious? Probably. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, considering everything else. But I needed to know for sure, before I attempted to carry the emotional burden of the things I’d been accused of doing. If I had harmed my mother and the warlock, I deserved to drown in guilt, shame, and horror. How could I know beyond any