Chapter Twenty
Adria is waiting for me when I finally make it back to the room. She stands near the window, arms folded tightly across her chest, her expression unreadable.
I brace for her response. She hasn’t hit me since we were children, but if anything is going to provoke violence, it’s this.
“Un-be-fucking-lievable,” she begins, meeting me at the door. Her blonde hair is dark and wet, fresh from the baths, and she’s already in her nightgown. I guess she got the message that I was alright. “I can’t believe you did it.”
I try to move past her into the room, but she stops me. “You did it. You saved the plan.”
Come again?
“You’re not mad?”
Adria laughs, and then she pulls me into a hug.
A hug.
“Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you made a shot like that! Sai’s fucking champion indeed.”
I’m not following, but I’m afraid if I admit that, I’ll make her angry somehow, so I just go along with it. “Well, Larus made sure I got a lot of practice—”
“Larus is going to be so proud when he gets back! It all could have fallen apart tonight. All our planning, everything we sacrificed. It all hinges on—”
She remembers her surroundings and pulls me to the foot of the bed in case someone is listening.
“—it hinges on Ronan dying at the exact right time. If they have time to gather their power behind a new king or queen, we’re fucked. It was so close.”
It was close. And there’s a part of me that hates Adria for the gleeful way she talks about it. The way she talks about his death like it’s just a step in a process to her. Something fun, too, like baking a cake. Add eggs, flour, sugar, murder the king, and stir.
I can’t tell her how it made me feel to save him. I can’t tell her that although I did know that the timing had to be precise, I didn’t think of it tonight.
I can’t tell her about the war that’s raging inside of me.
She won’t understand.
When she asks what we talked about, I only tell her that he wanted to express his gratitude and see what I knew about Calliope.
I don’t tell her about the fact that his powers are waning, or that even so, he can still feel what I feel.
I don’t tell her that if we want to kill him, we need to change the plan to make sure she can do it because he’s unlikely to see her coming.
I don’t tell her because I don’t want her to do it.
And it makes me a traitor to my people. It makes me a traitor to my family. It makes me a traitor to the memory of my parents and everything they fought for.
I don’t tell her because if she knew, she’d kill me.
Adria waits for me before going to breakfast for the first time since we arrived. She’s in the best mood I’ve seen her in in a long time. As far as she knows, the plan is going exactly as she’d hoped, and today is the day she gets to humiliate Quinn.
I don’t know who I’d rather see win. I don’t think Quinn has suddenly changed her mind about Nithyrians, but I can’t help but appreciate what she did for me in getting me out of the dungeons. And I admire her loyalty to Ronan.
But Adria is finally being nice to me, and it’s hard to silence the part of me that relishes her approval in spite of everything.
Still, I don’t want to see her victorious. Or Quinn, for that matter.
Is there a way they can both lose?
Adria invites me to join her at the arena, but I tell her I’ve already promised Ronan that I’ll be joining him today. I didn’t find out when, though, and he’s not at breakfast for me to ask him.
Adria is thrilled to hear Ronan asked me to join him. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” she says. This…this might be the first apology I’ve ever gotten from her. “I hope you have the best time together.”
I feel a wave of nausea churning in the pit of my stomach. The first time I’ve ever had her respect, and it’s because she thinks I’m finally not fucking something up, when in reality…
I’m definitely fucking something up.
I head towards Ronan’s chambers to see when he’ll be heading to the arena, but I’m stopped by a servant.
“For you, miss,” they say, placing a slip of paper in my hand.
Meet me at the market.
- Soren
My heart starts pounding when I read his name. Soren.
Why would Ronan want to meet with me as Soren now that I know who he is?
Unless he’s found something out about Vesper.
I race down the steps and out of the palace. I don’t bother to hide who I am or where I’m going; there are far too many people around for anyone to notice what I’m up to.
The market is so incredibly full of people that I can barely enter it.
It seems that everyone from the entire region is in Faros today for the end of the tournament.
There are new merchants selling pennants and banners for spectators to wave, and I realize some of them are in our house colors. Nithyrian green and blue.
People are actually buying flags in Nithyrian colors. Are they going to cheer on Adria?
“You’d better get over here before they see you,” a familiar voice whispers.
Soren. It’s so wonderful to hear his voice.
It’s Ronan’s voice really, I know, and it’s Ronan’s face under the illusion, but there’s something just so comforting about seeing him like this again.
I let him lead me into an alley near where I first encountered him. “That was lucky. If they spotted you, we’d be in trouble.”
“What? Why?”
He tilts his head as if I’ve said something stupid. “Sylvie of House Verran, the hero of Selara? The savior of the king?”
“Is that what people think?”
“Some of them do, at least. We leaked that you saved me this morning to some of the town’s biggest gossips. It was that or face people who thought you were trying to kill me coming for your head. Though I can’t guarantee that won’t happen, not until the ceremony later.”
“Ceremony?” He’s talking about it like I should know what’s going on, but I don’t.
“The crowning of Sai’s Champion of the Bow?”
I think he means me, but that’s absurd. “We didn’t even compete. I don’t need a pity trophy.”
“You killed a would-be assassin with a single arrow during the archery competition. With one of the other competitors disqualified and the other unfortunately deceased, I’d say that makes you the winner. And judging by the colors on sale, the people seem to agree.”
The Champion of the Bow. The hero of Selara.
The people will recognize me after tonight, if I go along with it, assuming they don’t know me already.
I don’t know how to feel about it. I was known in Nithyria, but as the third child in a noble family.
Almost everyone who knew me had met my family personally.
They worked our lands or kept our house.
But the people here don’t know me at all, except for what I did for Ronan.
How can I be a hero to them?
“Can you disguise me?” I ask him. If we’re getting closer to the mole or at least what happened to Vesper, we should try to avoid being noticed.
“Not unless you’re sitting still. The illusion works because it’s on my own body. I don’t think I can keep it close enough to you. Here,” he says. He takes his hat off, the hat that hides his perfectly coiffed hair, and hands it to me. “Put your hair up in that. It will help.”
“Mess your hair up, then. You look like you spent an hour on it.”
“Two hours, thank you very much.”
“Come here,” I say, reaching my hand into a planter filled with sandy soil and a very dead succulent, the only thing in this alley that seems reasonably sanitary. “A bit of this will do.”
“Absolutely the fuck not,” says Ronan, dodging me.
“You have to. You literally look like a god fell down to earth, even with the scars.”
“You think I look like a god?” He drops Soren’s voice in surprise.
I roll my eyes at him. “You know you do.”
“But you think so?”
He leans a little closer to me, and I can’t resist the opportunity. I shove my dirty hand into his hair, messing it up as best as I can.
“Fuck!” he yells. He tries to get away from me, but I have years of experience wrestling with much older siblings. I manage to make him look very reasonably human in just a few moments of mussing.
“Better,” I say, appraising my handiwork.
He brushes some of the dirt away, but it’s still pretty effective.
“Did you get a lead on Vesper?” I ask him now that we’re sufficiently disguised.
He nods. “A man came in saying he saw someone of her description struggling with someone in an alley. We’re going to see what he knows.”
“When?”
“Just two days ago.”
Then there’s a chance she’s still alive. I’d nearly given up hope.
“But there’s something else. One of the shadow-born from the trial was reported missing yesterday. And a second one this morning.”
Two more shadow-born missing. Maybe I was right to avoid the trial.
“It could be another coincidence like Marcella,” he says. “There are a lot of people coming and going right now. It’s easy to get separated.”
“But possibly not,” I say.
He nods.
He leads me through a series of alleys that seem to follow the city wall. Twice we cross busy streets, but the disguises seem to hold, or maybe it’s just that people are too preoccupied with the festival celebrations to give us much notice.
We finally come to a nondescript door near a guard tower. We’re close to one of the city’s northern gates, and there’s a lot of foot and chariot traffic coming and going nearby. But no one seems to notice as Ronan knocks on the door in a strange rhythm.
“Selara, Vayla’s Favored Land,” he explains. It’s not the official anthem of Selara, but it’s a fairly common hymn. I recognize it the moment he says it.
A woman with a gruff voice opens a slat at eye level. “Business?”
“Soren Solinus to see Mery.”
“Token?”
Ronan removes something from his pocket and passes it through a lower slat on the door. I don’t get a good look at it, but it glints in the sunlight like a coin.
“Ten minutes.”
The woman closes both slats. Then there are a series of clinks and clangs as she unlatches a dozen locks. Finally, the door swings open.