Chapter Twenty #3
Light flashes from his fingertips, brief and bright. Ronan carefully tucks the nest back into the cavity, placing the warmed egg back inside.
Then he backs away. “I don’t know if that will make any difference. The starling will be back. But it was worth a try.”
I stare at him for a long moment, speechless.
I’ve never been more captivated by anyone in my life.
“What?” he asks, his good eye amused.
“It’s just…you’re not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
A monster. A villain. “I don’t know. Just not…that.”
Ronan, wearing Soren’s face, smiles shyly. Then, his expression shifts to something more playful. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
I laugh at that.
With neither of us sure what we’re looking for, we abandon the search. Ronan leads us through the alleys back to the palace.
“Am I like you expected?” I ask as we walk, unable to resist. There’s something about seeing his face as Soren that frees me to speak with him in a way that I can’t with Ronan himself.
“Better,” he says, and it sends a shiver through me.
“Soren, I have to tell you something,” I say with mock seriousness. “I met someone.”
“Oh?” He looks fake-puzzled. “Was it a red-headed man, about this tall, quite a good duelist?”
He’s describing Titus, the man who beat me in the sword-fighting tournament.
A man who flirted with me. “You noticed that?”
“Oh, I wasn’t there. Far too busy with the imports. But I heard the two of you had quite a bit of tension. I’ve heard they’re placing bets on whether you end up married.”
“They aren’t.” They better not be. That would be absolutely mortifying.
“They are. But there are rumors that your heart belongs to another.”
That very same heart begins to pound. “Oh?”
“Are they true?” Ronan faces forward, unwilling to look me in the eye.
“Well, I don’t know about my heart. But there is a man. He’s difficult to describe.”
“Ruggedly handsome? Roguish with a heart of gold?”
“Definitely not. More like disturbingly perfect. Uncannily gorgeous. In a way that makes your eyes hurt when you look at him.”
He feigns being stabbed in the chest. “Thank the gods you aren’t talking about me. I’d be absolutely insulted.” He pauses. “Not even the heart of gold?”
“Well, there is a lot of gold involved, I guess,” I say lamely. It’s true, but it sours the mood almost immediately.
Ronan grimaces. “You want to know something stupid? I fucking hate gold.”
I stop in the middle of an alley underneath a clothesline. “What?”
“I hate it, the whole damn thing—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Gold is the key to everything. It’s the reason our forests have been stripped, the reason my people are starving, the reason we fought a war. It’s all so Selara can have their fucking gold, and he hates it?
I’ve never been so insulted.
“Wait, Sylvie. Fuck, I mean Hazel. Let me explain.”
“My kingdom has lost everything for something you hate?”
He has the sense both not to correct me for calling Nithyria a kingdom and not to touch me.
He speaks quickly, moving back in front of me, which is good because I actually have no idea where we are or how to get back to the palace from here.
“I know how important gold is and what it costs Nithyria. Believe me, I know it. What I hate is why we’re all in this mess.
I hate that my father, in his infinite wisdom, destroyed so much of our lands—your lands and his own—that we have no choice but to keep making it.
One poor harvest, and we’ll starve without it.
All of us, not just Nithyria. It’s the only thing we produce in any real quantity.
All the alchemists tell me is how we need more ash, we need more gold, we’re going to run out any day now.
I’ve begged them to come up with another solution, but they’ve failed.
The entire Guild has ground to a halt. They do nothing now but make it; there’s no time for anything else.
Our greatest minds, and this is all they do.
So yes, Sylvie, I hate it. More than anything in this fucking world. ”
I don’t believe him. I can’t believe him. Ronan, the God-King of Selara, the ruler who succeeded his father and finished his war, all to control our ash, our lands, and our people, all for the sake of the fucking gold.
And he doesn’t even want it.
“I know you’re angry,” he says, and I am angry, and I’m even more angry that he can tell what I’m feeling. “But I’m still trying to find a solution for us. I’m trying to find another way forward—”
“Go to hell, Ronan.” My people are dying, they’re starving, and for what? For fucking what? “If you wanted to find a solution, you would have. You would have let us go! You had every opportunity. After your father fell, you could have ended it. You could have given us our freedom, and you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. Sylvie, I couldn’t. I just told you why. Everyone would have starved—”
“My people did starve! They’re still starving!”
“They aren’t,” says Ronan quietly, bracing for my reaction.
“Or at least they shouldn’t be. I looked into that when you told me about the grain a few weeks ago.
The grain has been arriving. There were spoiled shipments, but that was almost a year ago.
Bandits get them sometimes, but we always send more.
There shouldn’t be anyone going without.
I don’t know what they told you, but I’m certain of that.
It’s the one thing I’ve been focused on the entire time I’ve been on the throne.
It’s the thing that keeps me up at night.
I know you think you don’t know me, but from everything you’ve seen me do so far, do you really think I’d let people starve?
Do you think I’d starve them on purpose? Really, Sylvie?”
We’re nearly back at the palace now, and it’s a good thing, too, because we’ve completely forgotten to use our codenames. Ronan stops me in an alley, and I realize it’s the alley where I met Soren.
I think about Soren saving Nico. Soren leading me into a warehouse, trying to find Vesper. Ronan saving Taran when he was a child. Ronan giving rights to the indentured. Ronan inviting everyone to participate in the festival, even us. Even after what we did. He welcomed us with open arms.
Would Ronan let people starve?
No, I don’t think so.
But would Adria?
My first thought is no, of course not. Adria wants a war, not a famine.
She wants to take control back from Selara, and she knows that the only way to do it is by taking control of Selara itself.
If what Ronan said is true, Selara and Nithyria are dependent on each other, our fates intertwined.
We can’t have the independence my parents fought for, but we can ensure our freedom by ruling everything for ourselves.
But what would she do to make that happen? Or, more importantly, what wouldn’t she do?
Would she starve our people to win their support? Would she let them go hungry if it meant they’d rise up against the Selaran oppressors? Would she carefully control the grain shipments to make sure the people were fed enough to fight, but hungry enough to want to?
And if she did, would she tell me about it? Or would she leave me in the dark, knowing that she might lose my support if I knew the truth?
It’s plausible. I hate to admit it, but it’s plausible.
And I could see Seth going along with it. Hell, I could see Seth proposing the idea himself.
Larus, though, that’s where I’m having trouble. Because Adria and Seth would do anything for revenge. I can see that clearly now. Could Larus have been so blinded by his loyalty to them that he went along with it? Or has he been kept in the dark like me?
Are people actually still starving, or was that just last year, as Ronan said? Is this all just a lie they told me?
Or is this the lie? Is Ronan lying to separate me from my siblings? From my people?
Fuck.
I don’t know what to believe. I need to talk to Larus desperately, but he won’t be back for another week.
“Do you think I’d let people starve?” asks Ronan again. “It’s really important to me to know what you think.”
I can see the raw hurt on his face. He’s not accustomed to being doubted, not openly at least. But it goes well beyond that, and we both know it. He wants to know if I doubt him. It matters to him. He can feel what I feel, but he doesn’t know what I think.
And it’s tearing him apart, not knowing what I think about him.
I look at him, and I see exactly who he is, maybe for the first time.
“No, Ronan,” I tell him truthfully. “I know you wouldn’t.”