Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
EVIE
T he gates gave a loathsome little creak as the wind roared with a vengeance.
Still no rain. This was a tearless sob, not a formidable storm. A wail of sorrow that rattled Phoenix Peak, shaking my fence and whipping my freshly washed hair all around my face.
The flame shivered in my little lantern, the glow on the veranda timid and flickering, as I sat on the banister, one slender knee bent; the bones stuck out at odd angles underneath my dulled skin. A muddy stick dangled from my right hand, my fingers tainted with reddish soil from my courtyard.
I took another bite of my apple. It still tasted like ash.
Adara slowed her steps as she drew closer to the light. Cautious. She looked around my barren courtyard with a confused gaze. Still a wasteland, but now it had markings all over it. My handiwork, the only productive thing I’d done in weeks.
“You’re eating,” she said and I tried so very hard not to hear the relief in her voice.
I took another bite from my apple instead of a reply. I fought the instinct to spit it back out.
The wind hissed louder as the silence stretched between us.
Finally, Adara nodded at my billowing robe, a flimsy piece of silk that kept slipping off my left shoulder. “You’ll catch a cold.”
I snorted a bitter laugh. Whatever beast had been lying dormant in my veins rumbled viciously. “Concerned too, are you?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I was tasked with keeping you safe.”
“Am I safe?”
“You’re alive.”
Another mirthless laugh escaped my lips. What good was breathing when every inhale was bitter?
I turned my head slowly, finally looking at Adara. She stood with her arms behind her back, shoulders squared, back stiff. A fighter’s stance. Her eyes scanned my slight frame quickly.
She truly was worried.
And I truly didn’t care.
“You knew.” My low voice fought against the wind, spearing it.
Adara swallowed deeply, tilting her chin up. “I did.”
Whatever pieces my heart had fractured into clanked in my chest as another fragment fell. I’d known, as clear as I now understood how tainted the Protectorate Clan was. But hearing Adara admit to the deceit still hurt.
“That day when you attacked me. You knew then.”
“I already told you I reacted badly–”
“How?”
Adara clenched her jaw, the words coming out clipped. “I heard about the secret shipment of gold brocade. There was only one reason someone would keep so much bloody gold fabric a secret.”
Of course. The royal bride needed to wear red, not gold. Another clue the mountain hick hadn’t picked up on. Another slight in a never ending sea of them.
“Goose and Leesa?” I asked.
“Leesa probably figured it out the day of the wedding, when she saw the gold dress, but she wouldn’t have panicked you on a mere suspicion,” Adara said. “Goose still has a hard time believing it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said conversationally, even as I wanted to roar until I shook the entire Capital. No. The whole continent.
Adara hesitated. It was a strange thing to watch her mouth open wordlessly. Adara was always so intentional in her movements; like she planned each of them, even her sighs of disappointment.
“Because I do not trust your Clan,” she said finally. There was a curious mix of shame and conviction in her tone. “The information would have seeped out and it would have been used to strike. Too many lives at stake, including yours.”
After today, I definitely didn’t trust my Clan either. “You mean I would have told someone.”
“You trust too much.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ve sworn to protect me with your life–”
“And I will.”
“–but you risked absolutely shattering me by keeping this secret?”
“It is the way of this Clan. Your Clan now, too. For the good of the Blood Brotherhood.”
Fuck this Clan.
“And you did not shatter,” she said.
The pocket of power inside me sizzled, barely hanging on by a thread.
“You will not shatter,” Adara said forcefully, as if trying to convince herself.
“Adara,” I said as calmly as humanly possible, even as fire raged through me. That was good. The spark had returned. “I was ripped from everything and everyone I knew and spent sixteen long years being nothing more than a glorified attendant, made to feel like I was nothing but an inconvenience by my parents, the same people I unfortunately craved affection and attention from. Then I barely had the chance to cradle their lifeless bodies before being yanked away, to marry a vicious Clan heir. I saw my wedding turn into a massacre. I have lost my uncle and can’t protect my cousins. Then I came here and was almost killed. Twice. Then the man I–” I bit my tongue. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it . “–I thought I would spend the rest of my life with married someone else, who will become queen and take the throne I was promised, and nobody warned me. Now I find out someone from the Protectorate Clan likely knew I was hidden all those long years and did nothing , absolutely nothing to save me–”
Adara’s eyes widened.
“So tell me, Adara,” I said. “How can I not shatter?
“I…I don’t know,” she said. “But you can’t. We need you alive and fighting.”
Too much. It was all too much for one person–to survive, to accept, to live with–and everyone expected me to just…move on.
To be understanding.
To think about why those things had to happen, empathize, see the others’ perspective, and just write their wrongs off as nothing but the fate the gods had spun for me. To forgive and forget, be the better person, and rise above.
Being the better person was bullshit.
“I’ll tell you how.” I threw my apple core somewhere in the courtyard. The place was a dump anyway. “I’m too stubborn to fall when so many people want me to.”
It might have been my imagination, but I swore I saw Adara exhale in relief.
“I’m sorry,” she said solemnly. “I didn’t want you to suffer. I know what the right information in the wrong hands can do. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk you. I swore to protect you to the best of my abilities.”
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders even tighter, rising a few inches out of thin air. A true storm raged in her eyes as she stared at me, unmoving.
“And if I had to do it again, I would,” she declared. “Something is rotten in both of your Clans. I would rather have you alive and hating me, than kidnapped or dead. Send me away if you want, but that is the truth.”
This godsdamned Clan and its godsdamned rules.
I rose, the lamp’s glow casting grim shadows on my face and body. The wind hissed louder as Adara and I stared at each other for the longest time.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said at last. “If you stay, I expect full loyalty to me and only me.”
Adara’s eyes narrowed, as if she couldn’t quite recognize me. My voice was definitely different. Gruffer, like I hadn’t truly used it since now. Harsher. I knew what I reminded her of–the heinous replica of me, who had attacked weeks ago; her body was still decaying somewhere in Phoenix Peak, hidden by Adara herself.
“No more information leaking out. No more information hidden from me. No more fraternizing with him .” The enemy, for all intents and purposes. “If not, I’m sure he can find you other employment, probably with less hassle and better pay. Think on it.”
“I swore to protect you–”
“Think on it,” I pressed, one of his smirks appearing on my face. The one he used to throw around so casually back when we’d first met. Now I understood. It was the smile of mistrust, the quiet knowledge that people will inevitably fail you because so many had before. There was a cold detachment in that smirk, like a wall that shielded me from everyone else. “This is not a decision to be made lightly. If you ever break my trust again, you will no longer be welcomed in my home or my life.”
I stood as still as the great Dria Vegheara’s statue hidden in the Capital, yet my heart weeped. I’d trusted Adara, too much perhaps, and still didn’t understand her Blood Brotherhood logic.
It all came down to blood for them, didn’t it? They would bleed themselves dry to keep others alive, but they didn’t care about how they mangled the spirit. As long as a heart kept beating, who cared how broken it was?
This Clan dealt with blood.
The Protectorate dealt with the soul.
Blood. It’s always blood , his voice, ripped from a sweet moment, slithered in my thoughts, constricting them.
I shook my head against the tingles crawling up my neck. I didn’t want any piece of him in me, not even the memories he wandered through despite my best efforts.
“I understand,” Adara said gravely.
The storm quickened as we kept facing each other. I didn’t look away. I didn’t blink.
I wouldn’t cower anymore, in front of anybody, friend or foe.
Adara was the first to move her gaze and it snagged on the markings once more.
“Please tell me these aren’t some weird Protectorate runes,” Adara said evenly.
“I’d need Dara’s help to draw them properly. This–” I raised the stick I’d used to mark the red dirt with small, winding paths, circles to indicate where the bushes and trees would be planted, and thick squares for the special surprises hidden between them. “–will be my new garden.”
Adara’s mouth twisted with a grimace she didn’t hide quick enough. “You’re redecorating ?”
“In a sense.”
In the Protectorate sense.
Whether I was ready to or not, I had to face reality. I didn’t trust the guards or the warriors in Phoenix Peak. Barely a few weeks ago, I’d been kidnapped to have the blood drained out of me. While I’d been fighting for my life, someone had stolen the Quorolith scrolls from my own damn house. My parents’ mansion had also been infiltrated for years .
My home needed to be protected.
Adara sighed. “You can’t.”
“Excuse me?” I clenched my jaw. “You like this wasteland?”
“No.” Adara took an impatient breath. “Leesa would be better at explaining this.”
“Adara–” My voice turned with warning. I was done with surprises–especially ones that made Adara’s top lip curl like that.
“You’re on Blood Brotherhood land. In its prized citadel,” Adara said reluctantly. “And Blood Brotherhood tradition says that once you get a gift, you can’t give it away or change it. Unless you ask the gifter if you can. And that only happens once every other dynasty, since nobody asks.”
A spear must have slashed straight through my chest. It was the only explanation for the pain squeezing my lungs.
“The Dragon gifted you this property,” Adara went on. “The rules say you have to ask him to change anything about it. Personally.”
The fire inside me waned.
Pathetic. I’d been excited at the mere idea of doing something . Changing the garden, protecting.
And now I had to see him ?
Talk to him ?
Ask for anything from the man who almost destroyed me?
I sucked in breath after breath, already feeling the panic rise–and Adara was still staring at me, now with compassion.
I didn’t want it. It made me feel weak.
Poor little girl, fooled by the great Dragon.
I forced my shoulders to remain as still as possible and quieted my breathing. My heart still galloped, but at least nobody could see that.
“Noted.” I swallowed thickly. “I’ll expect your final answer by tomorrow.”
We shared a nod, and I turned, retreating from the lamp’s glow.
“He’s suffering too,” Adara called after me, halting my steady steps.
I know , I almost cried out.
His pain was constantly there, at the outskirts of my mind.
Like a pulsing wound that would not seal, infecting me.
Every.
Single.
Day.
He’d dampened all he could of his emotions and I tried my damndest to do the same, but whatever this bond between us was, it wouldn’t leave me alone.
I hated that I still felt him–and I hated that a small part of me wept for his pain.
“Good,” I said, not turning. A deep breath later, I began walking again down the empty hallway.
“You forgot your lamp,” Adara called out once more.
“You take it,” I said as I stepped fully into the darkness. The echoes of my past fear still nipped at me, raising the hairs on the back of my neck, and making my movements jittery and hurried.
But I was no longer the Evie who had feared the night.
After all, the worst had been done to me in front of hundreds of witnesses and a crowd who clapped at my misery.
I wasn’t safe anywhere.