“I never do anything wrong.”
He put his cup back down, ceramic clanking against the marble table. Sidaine stares at the half-full cup of tea with a lemon in the middle of it, swaying and swaying, as if following her heart flutter.
“...pardon?” her voice is weaker than she intended it to be.
“Armel said what I did was wrong, didn't he?” Nathanael’s amber gaze bore through her soul. “But someone of your standing must know what a necessary evil is.”
The question struck Sidaine like lightning. Of course she knows what that is. Images of the Rulers she had helped kill flashes through her mind one by one. Her stomach churns.
Of course… she knows.
“I’m just doing my job,” says Nathanael as he examines Sidaine’s trembling hands. “I’m helping him.”
“I do the necessary evil that doesn’t involve blood,” he pauses, right hand combing back a few strands of his black hair back, “and he does the rest.”
“Still—” Sidaine tries to speak up, but her words are stuck in her throat after meeting the man’s eyes. The narrow amber eyes fit Nathanael’s defined poker face greatly, and they never fail to petrify her.
“Still,” knowing what Sidaine was about to say, he continued her words.
“He’s the one who wears the crown, right?”
Sidaine gives a weak nod.
Nathanael picks up his cup of tea again with his long slender fingers, ones he never uses to neither chokes someone, pushes someone off a cliff, pulls a trigger of a gun on someone’s temple, nor holds a butcher knife that goes through someone’s ribs—if what all Armel said are true.
Nathanael’s hand is the cleanest one of them all, yet he’s the one that runs this whole bloodied country.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown, as William Shakespeare said.” His poker face doesn’t change. “But the one who put the crown on his head is also equally heavy.”
He sips his tea.
“Everything that I do is for the benefit of the country, Sidaine.”
The half-empty ceramic cup hits the marble table again.
The lemon sways again.
“I’m sure you already know that.”
Sidaine drops her head, looking down at her empty cup. “I… do.”
She hates how she knows Nathanael is not fully in the wrong. He’s just doing what he needs to. And he’s doing a great job at it. Doubt starts swirling in her mind.
Is she ever in the right at all?
Is trying to take down the one keeping the country running the right thing?