Chapter Thirty-One
“Why?” I croak.
Why is Zara, the head of the Alchemists’ Guild, the person who helped me during the Festival of Sport, a close confidante of Ronan and one of his most trusted advisors, trying to kill me?
Not trying. Actively killing me. She’s killing me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.
I couldn’t stop if I tried.
“I didn’t want to do this. You gave me no choice.
Don’t worry; I won’t be killing you today.
I need you alive to use the blood, so it’ll be a day or two.
Honestly, it’s a shame to have to kill you at all.
A shadow-born as powerful as you? I have such high hopes for your blood.
But Ronan has been enough of a nuisance with just those spies of his missing.
I’d never have taken them, of course, but they were getting too close as well.
But you? You’re going to need to turn up dead so we can finish what we started. ”
“What?” It’s all I can manage to say. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Zara sighs. “I’m just trying to do what he asked me to. You understand that, right?”
I manage a single blink at her. She shifts, stroking her dark braid.
“I guess we have some time.”
She opens a door across from the table and returns a moment later with a wooden chair, placing it so that she’s facing me.
Then she tilts my head down so that I’m looking at her.
It’s strange, the effort she takes to make this seem like an ordinary conversation, given what she’s told me she’s planning to do.
Perhaps she truly is as lonely as Larus says.
“Ronan asked us to find an alternative to the phoenix cypress ash. A couple of years ago, when I became the Guild Mistress. And I told him I’d do it, only he wouldn’t let me try the one thing that might work. Blood. So I had no choice.”
The forbidden magic she spoke about in the bathing caves.
“Blood’s not exactly something easy to come by, at least not the quantity we needed. We had a source for it, but then you shut that down too.”
I struggle to understand her meaning.
Then it hits me: Marcella. The imports in the warehouse. She must have been smuggling things that the Guild wasn’t allowed to use. Things like human blood.
“We still don’t have an answer for the ash, but it turns out shadow-born blood does have a use. It suppresses light magic, after a delicate refinement process, of course. The process is not unlike the gold alchemy, actually. But we do have to keep them alive. The blood of the dead holds no magic.”
The missing shadow-born. If what she’s saying is true, they must be alive here somewhere.
Or some of them must be.
I look around the room while she’s speaking, as much as I can under the effects of the elixir.
I’m not in the palace, of that much I’m certain.
If Ronan were nearby, he would come for me.
My thoughts of a cellar were probably accurate.
A hidden room, connected to the Alchemists’ Guild somehow, maybe accessed from that door in the alleyway. Tunnels underground.
If I escape—which is a big “if” at the moment, considering she has me paralyzed—could I find my way to the other shadow-born? Maybe she’ll keep me with them once I’m done for the day.
“Why?” I croak again. Why suppress light magic?
“The problem, like every problem in this place, is Ronan. He’s right about freeing Selara from its dependence on the ash.
The ash isn’t sustainable, not the way we use it.
The forest can’t regenerate itself in time.
We have five years, maybe ten at this rate, before it runs out.
But to find an alternative, we need Ronan gone. He won’t let us do what we need to do.”
I imagine Ronan would take issue with harvesting mass quantities of blood for any reason, even if the donors weren’t killed. It would be trading one exploitation for another.
“Kill—?” I try to ask. They’re trying to kill Ronan?
“Yes, and we’ve explored a lot of avenues to do it. And then you and Adria showed up, and I thought we had a real chance. Adria came to me, looking for an alliance of sorts. She was careful not to give herself away, but I understood her meaning.”
Of course she did. Of course she did.
Zara shifts back a bit so I can see her better, and then she puts on Adria’s face.
Fuck.
The illusion is weak, but it’s passable. How many times did she pose as Adria?
“I had better ideas where she was involved,” she says, her voice rasping. That time in the tunnel when she was waiting for Quinn and her voice sounded strange.
It was Zara.
She drops the illusion, looking as though it had strained her somewhat. “I declined to help her. You never can be sure of the outcome of a war in advance, and I didn’t want to jeopardize my position within Ronan’s confidence in case things didn’t turn out the way we both wanted.”
Well, at least there’s that. At least there’s one thing Adria isn’t involved with, although not for lack of trying.
“But you? I thought you were amazing at the beginning. I couldn’t have made someone better for the task if I tried.
You were mysterious, beguiling. Beautiful and deadly, the perfect temptation.
I thought you would succeed in your plans, and then we’d have someone on the throne who would understand our needs.
Who would be more than happy to sacrifice a few Selaran shadow-born for the sake of Nithyrian workers. ”
She sighs deeply, shaking her head. “But I was wrong. Oh, how you disappointed me, Sylvie. When I saw you with him, looking for the shadow-born, I thought it was simply part of the plan. Simply a way to keep him close. But then you spared him at the festival. I told Calliope her plan was flawed, but I never thought it would be you to end it.”
She had worked with Calliope. She had probably worked with the man in the throne room from the first day of the festival too. She was the mole Ronan had been looking for, the one who had undermined his plans, the one who had leaked his secrets. She’d been working against him all along.
“Hermes nearly convinced me that it was just because you wanted to get the timing right on Ronan’s death to give your precious war the best chance of succeeding.
But I could see the truth that night when they brought you to his chambers.
You loved him, or you were growing to love him.
I knew then that you’d never kill him. And so, I had to change the plans a bit. ”
She gestures around her. “He’ll come here on his own because he doesn’t trust anyone but you.
I left the path less concealed this time; he’ll find it eventually.
And when he does, we’ll be ready for him.
Maybe if he hurries, I’ll be able to keep you alive for a bit longer.
The blood replenishes, you know. We won’t need the light magic suppression anymore, but I’m convinced that the answer is there for the gold process.
It’s not my best work, as far as plans go, but it’ll have to do for now. ”
My blood—what’s left of it in my body; how much has she taken from me?—runs cold. I have to find a way to stop Ronan from coming here. Can he feel me? He’ll be able to when he gets close.
Don’t come here. It’s a trap. Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come. I think it over and over again, trying to feel the words with every ounce of my being. Can he feel them? Will he understand?
Zara looks at whatever on the floor is holding my blood. “I think that’s about enough for now. I’m sorry for this, but I’m going to have to put you out to move you. Don’t worry; I promise I won’t kill you until the wax has been made. Sleep well.”
I thrash against the table, but my legs and arms barely flex at all. I strain, trying my best to move my head to the side, but I can’t do it.
Zara approaches me and holds a handkerchief over my face again.
And in a moment, I’m back under.