“You wouldn’t understand,” Kris muttered under his breath. His fingers coiled into fists as he turned his back on Ophelia’s figure. “You’re not from around here.”

Ophelia stepped forth and allowed for the door, which led to Kris’s room, to shut behind them. “You say this with certainty,” she told him, her voice a whisper lost to the callings of the wind brewing a storm outside. “You say this as if I have not lived among you for many a day. As if I had not been subjected to your father’s rule, too. As if I did not have to watch you tear down the lives of deer for your traditions, and be forced to face the aftermath’s of what you’ve done on the walls of your bedrooms.”

Kris’s shoulders tensed. Ophelia wondered if she’d gone too far. “You saw that?” his tone wasn’t that of pride, but of a man who had many things to hide—shame, she thought. And then: Strange; how very, very strange of him it would be to even feel such remorse.

“I know you take lives for pleasure.” Ophelia’s statement rang across the room like an arrow of truth that pierced the silence between them. “I don’t need to know more.”

And that is when Kris’s guard shattered, because, “I know you can’t talk to the others,” he said as he approached. Ophelia thought it was over. She believed she had angered the man that had become Death for her once more—but this wasn’t the case. He wasn’t coming at her with a sword. He was holding her, with arms that had once been open, arms that were now clasped around her, arms that prevented Ophelia from watching as he cried.

Arms that muffled the words she nevertheless heard, “I’ve never murdered anything or anyone, Ophelia,” he said. “Elian, he—” Kris took a deep breath that shook like his legs did, that quivered Ophelia’s hands did. “Elian did it for me,” he whispered the words like they were made of sin. “We lied. We lied to father, to everyone. He did it for my sake. Because I wasn’t strong enough to murder with these hands.” He pulled away from her, glanced down to his open palms with hate-filled eyes. “I am weak, Ophelia, and I hate that you have come here. Because of you”—their gazes met, his was now fire, as was hers—“because of you…” Kris lowered his voice. “Because of you,” he said, “they risk knowing I am not a hunter; and if they discover the truth, I will turn into the hunted, a king shunned from his throne.”

He looked away with disgust. “Do you understand now? Do you understand why I do not want you near me? Or will you haunt me like that deer did with its round, and innocent eyes that begged me not to do it? Do you do this on purpose?” he was shouting now, a victim to his rage. “Answer me, Ophelia! Do you want to remind me of that day where Elian proved that he should have been king and not me?” He sniffled, took a step backward, away from her. “…I can’t,” he muttered. “I can’t take this anymore. Why? Why do you torture me so? Who sent you here?”

“Kris…” Ophelia bit her lip. She tried to reach out to him, but the newly appointed king swatted her hand as if it were a fly, and down it came to rest by the young girl’s side yet again. “Forgive me,” she said, not because she felt need to apologize, but because she didn’t know of any other word in her vocabulary to express the sorrow she’d been feeling for the past couple minutes. Ophelia shook her head. Her eyes were shut. “I did not mean to remind you of those times, no.” She blinked.

“Is it true, what you tell me?” she asked, after a few seconds had passed.

When Kris turned to her one final time, with clouds shrouding his glare, Ophelia knew she had chosen the wrong words.

How she wished she could take them back.

Outside, rain started to pour harder than it’d been before.

Kris pointed at the door. “Get out,” he said. “Your presence is no longer needed here.”