The Beasts We Bury (The Broken Citadel #1)

4. Silver

4

S ILVER

|14 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|

The decision to target the Prospective Seconde was not a premeditated one.

I have to get the seal from someone, of course, but it didn’t have to be her. It could have been her reclusive older sister. It could have been her wilting wisp of a mother. If I was feeling ambitious, it could even have been the Prime himself. I studied all of them as I circled the table, serving them costly, imported drinks in sculpted glass bottles. I broke them down to bits, analyzing every expression and every word. I saw the ferocity in Mancella’s eyes as she struggled to suppress her reaction to the meat. I caught how Lady Wespa’s hands shook under the table as the conflict rose, but the smile on her face didn’t crack. I noticed Mara pulling back whenever someone almost touched her, like she disdained human contact. And I studied the cold calculation in the Prime’s expression as he prodded the conversation to the point of explosion and then reveled in the fallout.

They did not return the attention. As I poured, I stood close enough to kill any one of them, and yet none of them spared me a glance.

But it wasn’t until I locked eyes with the jaguar that I made my decision. I was halfway through filling Prime Azele’s goblet when the last four I’d filled went careening to the ground, their expensive contents spattered across the marble floor, and then suddenly I was staring into the acid yellow eyes of a predator, and the breath in my lungs evaporated.

But not because I was afraid.

Because the beast’s expression held exactly the same desperate ferocity as Mancella’s.

And I found that fascinating .

The next thing I knew, I was throwing together a salad in the kitchen, scribbling out a note on a page torn from the back of a cookbook, and approaching the future ruler of the realm as casually as I might approach a girl in the local tavern.

Now, hours later, sneaking back into the kitchens after the rest of the staff have gone to bed, I wonder at my own audacity. I’m probably going to get myself killed one day. This day, even. As the lock clicks open and the door swings wide, I stretch my arms over my head, wondering how much I’ll miss them if they end up down the jungle cat’s gullet.

“This is amazing,” Rooftop whispers beside me. He rushes forward, brushing his fingers over kitchen appliances like they’re works of art.

“It’s an oven,” I tell him. “Can you use it or not?”

I say this to goad him, and it works. He gives me an outraged splutter, like I might have forgotten for a minute that his parents were bakers before they were shipped off to war with mine and Vie’s, that he was raised in flour and salt and that he can do more with a pinch of either than most people can do with a full pantry.

“What do you want me to make?” he asks, rolling up sleeves that match mine. Once dinner was over, I stole a second uniform from the laundry and snuck away to the Outskirts. Vie was off fighting, probably working out her anxiety in the ring. But Rooftop was there and, after enduring several minutes of vigorous hugging, I smuggled him in through that servants’ tunnel Guerre neglected to mention to me earlier. It would have been infuriatingly easy to break into if I’d known about it, but I guess that doesn’t matter now.

“Can you make the pastries we ate yesterday morning?” I ask.

He scoffs. “I can make you something way better than that.”

“Then have at it, my friend,” I say, clapping him on the back. “Whatever your heart desires.”

His face lights up, and he riffles through cupboards, muttering to himself with glee. He grabs chocolate, sugar, and jars of spices. I grab an apple and scarf it down as I watch him work. An hour and a half later, there are five trays of thin, circular biscuits in the oven, a giant bowl of cocoa whipped cream on the counter, and a tray of chocolate shavings and candied nuts on the island in the center of the room.

“Thanks, man,” I say, tossing my apple core in the trash bin. “Now unfortunately, you have to leave.”

“Huh? Leave ?” He looks at me, stricken. “But it’s not done yet.”

“I’ll finish it,” I tell him. “It’s just that I told her to meet me roughly now-ish, and if she actually deigns to come, you can’t be here when she does.”

“She?” Rooftop raises an eyebrow. “She who?”

“She Mancella,” I say with a smirk.

Rooftop’s mouth falls open. “You’re not .”

“What?” I ask innocently. “It was your idea.”

Rooftop tears off his apron, throwing it on the countertop forcefully enough to awaken a cloud of white powder. “I was joking!” he hisses. “You’re seriously going to try to seduce the girl who rips animals apart with her bare hands? Using my torte?”

“Not seduce,” I tell him. “Just… persuade. I mean, probably. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t have that much of a plan yet.”

Rooftop pinches the bridge of his nose and takes several deep breaths. “Do you ever think about taking a night off from giving me heart attacks? I could really use one.”

“Sometimes,” I admit, “but what would you do with all your time if you didn’t spend it worrying about me? I would hate to deprive you of your favorite hobby.”

Rooftop mumbles something about the things he’d like to deprive me of, and I cordially pretend not to hear as I push him toward the door.

When we get there, Rooftop casts one last heartbroken glance back at the ovens. “I can’t believe you had me make all that and you’re not even going to let me eat it.”

I toss him a second apple and he catches it with a glare.

“You’re lucky I’m still overwhelmed with relief that you’re alive or I’d kill you myself,” he grumbles.

“Noted,” I say, shoving him out. “Now beat it!”

As I shut the door, he gives hurried instructions on the last few steps of the recipe, detailing measurements and techniques that I have absolutely no intention of following.

Just as I click the lock shut again, there’s a soft knock on the kitchen door that leads to the dining room.

I grab Rooftop’s abandoned apron from the counter, throw it on, and then dash some flour on my cheek to make it look convincing. “Come in!” I say.

The door creaks open.

And there she is.

Mancella Cliff.

It’s kind of an unreal moment, to be honest. I’ve spent my entire life jostling to get a glimpse of this girl across crowded squares. I watched her grow up, from a gangly kid to a scowling, terrifying figure wrapped in glass and silk. And even though the boyish admiration I had as a child has soured into contempt and disgust, she’s always been larger than life to me.

Meanwhile, until today, she didn’t even know I existed.

Yet here she is, responding to my invitation, blinking at me through wide, lash-framed eyes.

I’m struck by the fact that she doesn’t have any makeup on. At dinner, she was as ornamented as the candelabras, but now she’s wearing only a simple shift dress, with her hair in an oversized braid. She looks startlingly human.

Her ears, nose, and chin are all just as pointed and assertive as they looked from a distance, but when she isn’t glowering there’s a softness to her heart-shaped face. Her eyes are enormous, even without the benefit of kohl around their edges, and her mouth seems disproportionately small, giving her whole face an endearingly off-balance feeling I never noticed before. She’s also got knobby knees and elbows, frizzy hair, and a slight smattering of freckles across her nose.

I was expecting a glittering monster, but she’s… just a girl.

Which means I can break her.

“Have a seat,” I say. And as if on cue, the timer Rooftop set begins to clang.

I twist the dial and stuff my hands into two oven mitts. She doesn’t take a seat, but instead hovers by the door and watches, frowning, as I take tray after tray out of the oven and set them on the kitchen island.

“What’s all this?” she asks.

“A cinnamon chocolate torte,” I recite.

“For whom?”

“For you.”

After a pause, she narrows her eyes at me. “Why?”

I take off the oven mitts and toss them at the counter. “You didn’t eat much at dinner,” I say, my tone carefully friendly. “So I figured you were hungry.” I stick my hands in the apron’s pockets and flash her a dimpled grin that has never failed to get me attention when attention is what I want, and then wait for her eyes to melt gratefully at my thoughtfulness.

“ That’s why you called me here in the middle of the night?” she asks, folding her arms over her chest. “As it happens, I am not a child and am therefore perfectly capable of feeding myself. I ate hours ago.”

I blink and my smile thins.

Maybe this won’t be so easy after all.

Seeing my expression, she sighs and slides a hand down her face, then looks back up at me with a grimace.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she says. “This is a very, uh… kind gesture, and I appreciate it. I do. But in the last forty-eight hours or so I’ve had a horrific fight, a disturbing dream, and a truly disastrous dinner, so I’m pretty exhausted, and to be frank with you I think my problems are slightly bigger than your deconstructed confectionary can fix.”

My mind races, trying to figure out how to keep her here long enough for me to find another angle, because if she leaves now I doubt I’ll get a second shot.

“Well, we have to put it together,” I say awkwardly. “In, like, a tower.”

Brilliant, that should do it.

She scowls at me. “My problems are also bigger than a confectionary tower can fix, but thank you again for the thought.”

She turns to go, her braid swinging behind her, and I’m almost dazzled by how little she cares about my efforts. To any girl in the Outskirts, a torte of this decadence would have been impossible to turn down, but I guess a spoiled brat like Mancella can gorge herself on sweets whenever she pleases and therefore has no incentive to eat this particular one at this particular hour.

A flash of familiar and long-harbored hatred sears through me.

“What do you want me to do?” I burst out. “Eat the whole thing myself?”

It’s a ridiculous question because that actually sounds amazing, but she whirls back toward me, her eyes dark and sparking.

“Well, I didn’t ask you to make it and I don’t want it, so that’s a fairly logical next step, yes,” she snaps. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“But I didn’t make it for me,” I protest. “I made it for you.”

“You did that without asking me, though,” she spits through bared teeth, advancing on me. “And, to be honest, what I would like most today is for everyone to stop presuming what I would like or what I should do or what’s best for my life and just leave me alone .”

I open my mouth to snap back when something creaks in the next room and I still instinctually, straining to listen.

Maybe the noise was nothing.

Or maybe it was someone coming to see why there are raised voices in the kitchen. And it suddenly occurs to me how bad it would look if someone did see me yelling at an already infuriated future Seconde.

My heart hammering, I swallow my protests and manage to wrench my lips into a placating smile instead, doing my best to act like this tantrum Mancella’s throwing doesn’t bother me at all.

“Okay,” I say, putting both hands up in surrender. “Let’s start over. I apologize for not asking you in advance whether a torte might be something you’d enjoy tonight. That’s my bad. All I ask, although I acknowledge that I haven’t earned it, is for you to try one little spoonful before you go. A dollop, if you will. If you do that, then it will be completely up to you whether you want to finish making the torte with me, whether you want to leave and continue on with your original plan of sulking alone in your room, or whether you’d like to dump the entire bowl on my head, snap the biscuits into tiny pieces, and then light the whole kitchen on fire. I promise I’ll be fine with whatever choice you make.”

I stick a spoon in the bowl and thrust it toward her, hoping I can count on Rooftop’s skills to bring this home for me, since I clearly can’t count on my own.

She scrunches up her mouth, making it look even smaller. Her eyes are two dark chasms boring into me. And it’s strange, but I can almost see the jaguar lurking just behind them, ready to leap through her skin and attack. If she opened her mouth, I wouldn’t be surprised to see fangs.

“I’d let you leave first,” she says finally.

I shake my head, confused. “What?”

“If I decided to burn down the kitchen,” she explains. “I’d at least give you a head start.”

In spite of myself, I bark out a laugh, surprised by this concession. “Really? How long of a head start?”

“That depends on how bad this goop is.”

She grabs the spoon and pops it in her mouth, swishing it around a little before swallowing.

There’s a tense beat of silence as my hand drops back to my side.

Then she marches past me and sits down in front of the biscuits, arms crossed.

“Fine,” she says. “It’s delicious. Show me how to make it a tower or whatever.”

Spiteful triumph washes over me and I allow myself a small, smug smirk before I turn around to follow her with an expression considerably more benign. I sit down on the other side of the island, scoop up a biscuit from one of the baking sheets, and plop said biscuit on a plate. Then I slide the plate toward her.

“Put some of the whipped stuff on there,” I say blandly. “If you want to, of course. Absolutely no pressure. My head is still an option as well.”

She eyes me, and I wonder if perhaps I’ve been too bland and she’s picking up on the sarcasm dripping from my every word. But then she takes a healthy scoop and dumps it on the cookie, spreading it around with the back of the spoon. I put another cookie on top of that and she does it again.

We get into a rhythm, building layer by layer until the dessert is a tower of crisp wafer cookies and gooey cream. By the time we arrange the nuts and dark chocolate curls on top, the scent of cocoa, butter, and cinnamon is making my mouth water.

I hand Mancella a fork.

“Good job,” I say. “Now dig in.”

“Only if you join me,” she insists.

Now she’s being nice? After practically biting my head off earlier? So obnoxious.

But also, yes, obviously, I am going to eat this. It looks fantastic and if she didn’t give me any I would set this kitchen on fire myself. And whether I’d give her a head start is debatable .

Placid smile still in place, I grab a second fork.

The torte crunches as we dig into it, and it melts in my mouth, the perfect blend of cool smoothness and crispy warmth. Sweet, but with a bite as well.

For a few minutes, there’s nothing but the sound of biscuits cracking and metal tines clinking against the glass plate. She seems calm now. Pleased, even. She certainly seems to be enjoying the dessert. Her sharp features actually soften as she tries each component, easing into an expression that’s more like the beauty of a flower than the beauty of a knife.

It’s not until her tongue flicks over her thumb to remove a dab of icing that I realize I’m staring. I start, embarrassed, and focus back on the plate in front of me, because gawking is absolutely not how I want to play this.

I have to admit, though, it’s weirdly intimate watching her enjoy something. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her looking even remotely happy, and even longer since I heard her laugh. I mean, she isn’t laughing. She isn’t even smiling. The difference in her expression is barely perceptible, just an unclenching of her jaw and a lowering of her chin and a general relaxation of her features. But it makes me feel like a door has been cracked, and some part of me wants to see what’s on the other side.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” I try.

She looks at me with eyes so dark I can’t tell exactly where her pupils are. “About what?”

“About whatever’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

“You screamed a few things to the contrary when you first got in here,” I point out.

She stiffens, and her expression gets tight, her angular features once more pronounced. Her chin could slice me in half. “I’m not sure it would be appropriate to discuss any of those things with you,” she says primly.

“Yeah, but you already did, so there’s no real point in holding back now, right?” I ask.

“You’re awfully pushy for a servant.” She doesn’t say it in a mean way. More like she’s trying to figure me out.

“And for someone who lives in a castle, you seem awfully unhappy,” I shoot back. “So maybe there’s a little more to both of us than meets the eye.”

Her dark eyes study me, and I feel like I see the slightest flicker in them, like the spark of a match. “Maybe so,” she muses.

“Besides,” I say. “It’s healthy to let things out sometimes.”

“Like I did at dinner?” she says wryly. “You’re right; that went great.”

“What happened at dinner probably happened because you keep everything bottled up. When all you do is press everything down, it will eventually explode into a jaguar-sized outburst. But if you process things in more, I dunno, rodent-sized chunks, then it won’t get so out of control.”

She looks thoughtful. And then the next thing I know, there’s a squirrel on the counter in front of me, its tiny nostrils flaring like it’s trying to puzzle me out.

“I, uh… I didn’t mean literally,” I say, trying to pretend that being so close to her magic doesn’t thrill me.

Both Mancella and the squirrel stare at me, their eyes equally dark and unreadable.

Which is super creepy by the way.

“Does he want, like, a nut or something?” I ask, plucking a candied walnut off the top of the cake and holding it out. The squirrel does not move toward me.

“He’s dead,” Mancella says. “He doesn’t need to eat.”

“Right.”

She picks up the squirrel and puts him on her shoulder. He settles in, wrapping his bushy tail around her neck, but his eyes are still trained on me.

“All right,” she says. “Let’s have a… rodent-sized conversation. I’ll let you know afterward if I feel it changed my life and solved all my emotional problems.”

No pressure.

I cough and skim my fork over the top of the torte, gathering the rest of the rejected nuts into one enormous, creamy forkful.

But instead of feeling intimidated, like I should, I’m excited for the challenge.

“So you didn’t have a good dinner,” I start. “Obviously, that’s because of what your dad pulled, but it’s still bothering you so there must be more. Is it the guest? You’re worried about what she might think?” When she was trying to control herself, I noticed a lot of glances in the new Prime’s direction, so it’s a safe bet.

Mancella looks down, playing with some shavings that have fallen onto the countertop. “Well, yes,” she acknowledges. “Very much so, actually.”

I lick chocolate off my wrist, partially as revenge for the thumb thing earlier, and partially to unbalance her so she keeps answering my questions. I’m absurdly gratified when her gaze flicks up and then quickly down again. “Why’s that?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “That’s not a rodent-sized question.”

I cannot resist glaring at the top of her head, but I manage to snap my features back to placidity by the time her eyes meet mine again.

“All right,” I say. “You’re worried about what the guest might think, for reasons that are entirely your own and none of my business. So what are you going to do about it?”

She blinks at me like she doesn’t understand the question. “ Do about it?”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “I’m sorry, was pouting alone in your room the entire plan?”

Mancella doesn’t move, but the squirrel flings itself onto the table, gnashing its teeth at me and whipping its tail back and forth with this weird, guttural growl that doesn’t seem like it should come out of a creature so small.

With admirable restraint, I just barely manage not to launch myself out of my chair and flip the table.

“Could you, uh… make it stop?” I ask through clenched teeth.

“Don’t make me sound weak,” she snaps at me. “If I could do something, I would. But it’s not like I can just call on a foreign Prime myself. My father is always there.”

“So write her a letter,” I say, because even in the middle of a rodent onslaught, I am nothing if not focused on the mission. “Apologize. Put your family’s seal on it so she knows it’s from you.” Was that too obvious?

“My father thinks apologies are a sign of weakness,” Mancella protests. “He’d never allow it.”

“You wouldn’t have to tell him,” I point out.

She looks at me like I just suggested her head was detachable. “He reviews all our letters before they’re sent,” she informs me dryly. “There’s no way to get around him.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask sarcastically. “Does he deliver them himself?”

“Of course not. We send them with a servant.”

“Well, if only you knew someone on the serving staff who could sneak an extra letter in the bag.”

Mancella’s eyes narrow. “You do realize that would be treason, right?”

“What I realize,” I shoot back, “is that nothing in your life is going to change unless you change it.”

“Oh, so I should just disregard the rules completely, then?” she scoffs. “Throw them out if they don’t suit me? Rules are made for a reason.”

“I agree. And sometimes the reason is to keep the person who made the rules in power and to push everyone else down.”

Her eyes widen and her mouth falls open. The statement hovers between us like a buzzing bee, poised to sting.

Some nagging voice in the back of my head is trying to explain to me that this is the point at which I should backtrack. Tell her I didn’t mean it and redirect the conversation to more idle pleasantries. That’s what someone with sense would do.

But then she slams both palms on the table and lurches to her feet, raising her voice over the chattering of her squirrel, which is rising to a fever pitch between us. “How dare you?” she exclaims.

And I’m already launching to my feet as well, too caught up in the argument to listen to that voice of sense. “If you let someone else set the rules for you, then you’ll be stuck in the game they want to play,” I seethe. “And you’ll be a pawn, not a player. In this world, nothing is handed to you, and if you don’t take control of your own life, someone else will. In fact, it seems like someone already has.”

It’s not until the squirrel’s ranting suddenly cuts off that I realize I’ve gone way too far.

The silence feels thick and dangerous, and the way Mancella is looking at me makes me think I might be seconds away from getting flung off the cliffs I scraped my way up yesterday. My heart pounds in my ears and I open my mouth to take it back, but nothing comes out, like the silence is a physical force blocking my throat.

I’ve really, really messed up.

“Right,” Mancella says finally. “What’s your name again?”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “It’s, uh… Marc. Marc Hillcrest.” That was the name written on the scrap of paper I found in the uniform’s front pocket anyway. I don’t know where it came from, whether it was entirely fabricated or whether there’s a real Marc out there who was somehow deterred from showing up at the castle when he was supposed to.

I wonder briefly whether Guerre can get me a second new identity if I manage to destroy this one, because it seems like a distinct and imminent possibility.

Mancella grips the edge of the island with fingers like claws. The squirrel runs up her arm and then blinks out of being when she dismisses it without so much as a wave of her hand.

I can’t help but think it would be just as effortless for her to erase me.

“Well, Marc,” she says, voice measured, “as a thank-you for the torte, which was admittedly lovely, and as an apology for unloading all my anger on you when I first walked in here, I am going to pretend you didn’t just suggest betraying the throne and then rail at me about my perceived deficiencies. And I will refrain from sharing that information with your supervisor as well. This time. But I will also be ending this conversation here, as it’s clear to me we have very different ideas of what is and isn’t appropriate, and I would suggest you think very carefully before saying anything of the kind to me ever again. Good night to you.”

She turns on her heel and strides out of the room, the door slamming shut behind her. My mind goes momentarily fuzzy as I replay everything I just said and barely resist slapping myself in the face. She said she wouldn’t report me, but she could . She could have me killed. She could kill me herself. For some ludicrous reason, I was talking to her like she’s a regular human, but she isn’t.

She’s a demon in a family of demons and I’m a bug beneath her feet.

For a minute I just stare at the door, trying to figure out what to do. Run? Hide? Follow? Drop this identity completely, construct a new one, and try again tomorrow? The new one would have to wear a mask at all times so she doesn’t recognize me, but I’m sure I can come up with a reason for that. Traveling performer, perhaps?

Sliding a hand down my face, I head back to the outside door and call, “Rooftop? You still there? Hanging out to make sure I don’t get executed and such?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” responds a bush to my left. The leaves rustle and then Rooftop emerges through the branches. “How’d it go?” he asks.

I pluck a leaf out of his springy curls. “Not great and then okay and then abysmal,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is how it felt to be alone with a girl I loathe, and how little I was able to keep my cool while doing it. Or how much that bothers me.

He scans me for injuries. Finding none, he must decide it can’t have been that bad, because his stance relaxes and an easy and hopeful grin flits across his face. “That’s nice. Is there any torte left?”

I jab a thumb behind me and he eagerly heads back into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

“Make sure you clean everything up before you leave!” I call after him before dashing away to the sound of his affronted protests.

He’ll be fine. He’s better at cleaning than I am anyway, and I’ve got no time to help right now.

I need to figure out how to salvage this.

And quick .