Chapter Seventeen
Ina reached the burrow court quickly enough that her breath still came hard when she crossed into the lower halls.
She went first to the library because that was where Karai always seemed to be when trouble turned thoughtful. He liked to stand over maps and books as if force of attention alone might make the world behave sensibly.
But this time, the library stood empty. No sign of Karai.
For a moment she stood there, annoyed at herself for the small uncertainty that followed.
Then she remembered, with a flicker of amusement between the annoyance, that he did in fact possess a bedchamber like any other prince.
It was only that their relationship had so rarely required one.
Most of what had passed between them, in one form or another, had happened in her own room, the library, the garden, hidden nooks, or anywhere else that seemed likely to make a proper palace steward despair.
She turned and went down the corridor toward his rooms.
When she knocked, there was a pause long enough to tell her he had not been expecting anyone. Then the door opened.
Karai stood there looking surprised to see her, and more drained than she liked.
Not untidy, of course. He was too much a prince for that.
But wariness had worn away some of the polish.
His hair fell less neatly, as though he had run his hands through it too many times.
His armor was gone and his shirt sleeves were rolled.
Behind him, on the desk near the window, pages of writing and several drawings lay spread out in a pool of dim lamp light.
He stepped back to let her in, but she stayed where she was in the doorway. She had never been good at circling a thing when the center of it would do.
“I went to warn the marsh and canopy courts,” she said in a rush. “Jassie got another note, and Lugo threw it in the marsh. Matilde turned into a mirage creature, though Eogan thinks she’s dead already. And… he told me more of your past with the mirage fairy.”
Karai drew back, taking in everything she said, then finally sighed. “I’m sure he did.”
“Is it true?” she asked. “You were so in love with her that you ignored her crimes?”
He looked at her then in a way that was almost insulted.
“Ina,” he said softly in response. “Please.”
She held his gaze.
He gave in with a sharper exhale and looked past her for a moment, gathering his thoughts or his temper, perhaps both.
“I know from Eogan’s perspective it looked that way,” he said at last. “But she was – is – more powerful than I even hope to be. She enchanted me. And yes, I did love her, without enchantment at first.”
He moved farther into the room, taking a few pacing steps and stopping again. The words came more roughly now.
“But when I learned what she was doing, when I learned of the fairies she had killed, I did try to stop her. She blurred my vision then. Kept the mirage on me. Made me hallucinate. Constantly. What I saw changed before my eyes. Faces, rooms, distances, doors. I could not trust anything I looked at.
I could not even trust what I felt. In my head I was clawing to get out of her prison, but in my heart I felt only the deepest devotion. I felt only that I must do her bidding.”
He broke off. Ina saw him trying to keep the memory in hand without it piercing into him, and not quite managing it.
“I...” He stopped again, then forced himself on.
“I was only just learning to transform. I wanted to be a fox, like her. That was the plan. But I had to break her spell somehow. So I chose a mole, nearly blind, because her magic could no longer affect the most important sense she could control. I still felt loyalty to her,
but it was easier to break without the lie surrounding me. I escaped through smell and hearing alone, and... well. The rest, you know. But once chosen, I could not go back to another animal shape. It’s mole for life.”
Ina said nothing for a little while. She had known he disliked that form.
Known it well enough to have seen the bitterness in him whenever it came up.
But she had not known why. Not this why.
Not that he had chosen it as a way to cut himself free from someone who had turned his own sight against him.
At last she said, quietly, “I didn’t realize.”
Karai let out a bitter little laugh. “Of course Eogan told you the story as he saw it. There are two sides to every coin.”
She nodded slowly and went to him. “I’m sorry,” she said, drawing him into an embrace before he could decide whether he wanted one. “I should never have thought that you would have chosen… this.” She waved her hand vaguely around them, not herself quite sure what “this” was.
His arms came around her, tighter than pride alone would have allowed.
Pressed against him, Ina understood a few things better than she had an hour ago.
Why he hated the mole. Why he held himself so carefully in all things.
Why, even when he first wanted her badly enough to show it in every glance and every held breath, he had still kept himself on a leash until he was sure she wanted him too.
He had learned control by necessity, and then by pain, and then by survival.
No one reached that kind of discipline by temperament alone.
“Why are you the only one who remembers her?” she mumbled against his chest.
“Emmie… felt I needed to,” he said with another sigh. The rest of the explanation came unspoken. Too much pride, broken by the memory of humility. Then he added quietly, “And I felt I needed to, too.”
“Do you…” Ina paused, unsure if she really wanted the answer to the question. Then it came out anyway, in a rush. “Do you still love her?”
He hesitated, but she heard the familiar honesty in his answer when it came. “I feel a great many things about her. But no. Love is not one of them.”
“Good,” Ina said, lightly enough to force a short laugh out of him.
He looked down at her after a moment, and the love for her in his face was so plain it sent a flutter down her spine.
“You bring my heart out of despair,” he said softly.
She smiled. “Only to make up for all the despair I’ve brought you.”
She turned her head to lean it against his chest. That was when her eye caught on something at his desk.
One page had slipped partly under another. She could only see the edge of a drawing, a curve of dark ink, the start of a cheek or jaw. Nothing that ought to have mattered. Yet something in it tugged at her attention with such force that she stepped away from him without meaning to.
Karai turned slightly. “What is it?”
She went to the desk and pulled the page free.
The moment she saw the face on it, she gasped and dropped the paper as though it had burned her fingers.
Karai came toward her, brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Why do you have a drawing of Zuri?” Ina said. Her own voice did not sound right to her. Too thin. Too shrill.
Karai bent, picked up the paper, and looked at it. Looked at the beautiful face with violet eyes and long, curling black hair. Then he looked at Ina, eyes full of shock he couldn’t disguise. “Ina,” he said softly, “how do you know this is Zuri? How do you know her name?”
The room tilted. Ina caught the edge of the desk with one hand to steady herself. All the color seemed to drain out of the world instantly and leave only that name hanging there between them.
“No,” she said, though she knew already that yes was the worse truth.
Karai looked up, confusion rising in him. “No what?”
She had to take a breath before the next words would come. “We have to go. Now.”
He did not move. “What?”
Ina forced herself to stand properly. “That is the mirage fairy?”
“Yes.” His voice came barely audible.
“One of Princess Jasenka’s three ladies,” she said. “That’s Zuri.”
He still looked as if she had begun speaking another language.
She made herself plainer. “She’s been there the whole time, Karai. Under our noses, hidden in plain sight. Right next to Lugo and Jassie day in and day out, for the last week or two. Forgotten by everyone else, so why would she bother with any form other than her own? Jassie told me she was new.”
He frowned in disbelief, in the pain of trying to fit one fact over another that would not go. “You must be mistaken. It can’t be her. It must be another Zuri, someone else. Or I would’ve recognized her.”
Ina searched her memory and asked, “When?”
That checked him. He thought about it too, but no memory came to him of Jasenka having three ladies. He had only seen one.
“She didn’t come to the canopy court after the attack. She went back to the marsh,” Ina went on, speaking his thought out loud.
“She may have been at the ball in the marsh court, but we were too busy with ourselves to notice if she was. You haven’t been back to the marsh court at all, not since the ball. You haven’t recognized Zuri because you haven’t seen her. You haven’t had a chance to.”
Karai sat down on the edge of the bed. The shock in him was so complete it stripped his face bare. He looked younger for it and older too.
“Blind again,” he murmured.
“No.” It came out more sharply than she meant. She caught his hands before he could fold inward around the thought. “No,” she said again, softer now. “You cannot call yourself blind to something that stays hidden on purpose.”
He met her eyes. “But she’s not staying hidden on purpose, is she?” His voice came rough. “She’s using her own name, and her own shape. No mirage.”
Ina’s heart nearly stopped. “She wants you to know she’s free. This whole time, she’s been waiting for you to know.”
He could only nod.
“Why? What does she want from you?”
“I kept her from taking the throne. I tricked her. I imprisoned her.” He hesitated, staring at the floor. Then, with a little shame lining his voice, added, “She deserved it all, but… after everything, I was too angry for anything less than cruelty.”
Ina thought of the riddle from the stone head. Cruelty then and vengeance now. Perhaps, it occurred to Ina, not only the cruelty of the mirage fairy. “Revenge, then. She wants her vengeance… on you.”
He couldn’t bring himself to answer.
She shook her head, trying to clear the jumble of thoughts in it. “That doesn’t explain why she wants to kill Lugo though.” After a moment, she pulled him up from the bed, bringing him out of some reverie. “And yet, she does. You don’t have time to pity yourself right now. We must go.”
After a beat, he nodded again.
They left the room with fire in their steps. Ina did not bother with courtesy in the corridor. The first page she saw got a direct order before he had time to do more than bow.
“Send word to Prince Derran,” she said. “Tell him to meet us at the marsh court. Urgently.”
The page blinked, then ran.
They did not wait to see whether he did it well. They were already on their way out of the palace, through the lower halls and up into open air, flying hard back toward the marsh court and whatever waited there in the lovely face of a lady no one had thought to fear soon enough.