Chapter 19
Nineteen
I run.
Down the crowded, twisting halls, past blurs of horrified faces.
Several of them are palace guards, but I don’t bother asking for help or reporting Von Nevus.
They won’t believe me over one of King Soren’s councilors.
They won’t punish him for the same reasons. In fact, they’d probably encourage him.
Men like Garitt Von Nevus are untouchable.
I don’t stop running until I’m locked inside the walls of my chamber, surrounded by impenetrable stone.
But even then, I feel too alone and vulnerable.
I trip frantically through the sitting room and grapple the protrusions of emerald and quartz until I find the hidden knob and shove through the heavy door.
It isn’t until I stumble into the echoing solarium and see Alaric’s empty desk that I realize how desperately I hoped he’d be here. But of course he isn’t. He’s been avoiding me since our first and only encounter in this space. And it’s not like he’d believe me or care that I’m being harassed.
I break into erratic laughing sobs, fall to my hands and knees, and vomit all over the rug. Just because I no longer believe Alaric killed Rowenna, it hardly makes him safe. That’s how utterly alone I am on this mountaintop. Somehow, he’s my best option. My most tolerable enemy.
Still whimpering, I curl onto my side and stare out the wall of windows, watching the sun paint the snow-dusted mountains purple and pink. But I don’t actually see any of it. Just as I don’t realize I’m compulsively clawing at the tattoo on my wrist until my nails break the skin.
Our clovers were supposed to be a promise. A vow to love and protect one another. But I’ve never felt more lost and terrified and alone. I want to find a sharp piece of shale to scrape off every layer of green-dyed skin.
How am I supposed to believe Rowenna caroused with Queen Tessa, drank bagrava tea, and traded intimate favors with men like Garitt Von Nevus?
How am I supposed to accept that our precious bagrava is used for nothing more than idle recreation, and watch the Vanzadorians fawn over Soren, when I know his kindness and generosity are an act—so they’ll happily supply him with memories?
It’s all so wrong.
And makes horrible, perfect sense.
I’m so lost in my spiraling thoughts, I don’t realize someone else has entered the hidden solarium until they ease down beside me.
There’s a featherlight touch on my back. “Shh. Don’t be afraid. I want to help.”
I flinch and lash out, wild and wounded like the foxes we find in the traps dotting our fields. “Don’t touch me!”
The stranger holds up their hands, and as my gaze travels upward, I’m shocked to find the face of my maid looking down at me.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
Her expression is almost as fearful as mine, but she tucks a strand of golden hair behind her ear and attempts to smile. “I’m here to help.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “You expect me to believe that? After everything? Why are you really here?”
She frowns but doesn’t back down. “I came because I heard what happened. My friend services Councilor Von Nevus’s chambers, and he overheard the, um, commotion when he came to deliver fresh linens.
He saw you flee the room.” My maid shudders and weaves her skinny arms around herself. “Did Von Nevus hurt you?”
I shake my head and look away from her pitying gaze.
“I’m glad of that, but you shouldn’t have been in his rooms at all. Von Nevus is a disgusting pig. I should have warned you about him.”
“That would have required you to occupy the same room as me for more than five seconds,” I snip.
“I know.” The girl lets out a weary breath, and her entire body sags. I expect this to fill me with vindication, but annoyingly, her guilt doesn’t make me feel better.
“It isn’t your job to look out for me,” I mumble. “I wouldn’t have listened anyway.”
Not with Rowenna encouraging me to seek out Von Nevus.
I still can’t believe she’d lead me to that pig. Maybe he’s changed. Or I somehow misunderstood her instructions.
“Has Von Nevus hurt you?” I ask my maid, my voice so low, it’s almost a whisper. “I’m not trying to pry. You just said you should have warned me; does that mean—”
My maid cuts me off with a decisive shake of her head. “I was lucky. Others warned me to keep my distance when I came to work in the palace.”
“Good.” I busy my hands with the letter opener I’m still clutching, hoping the girl will scamper off like she has before.
But now that I want her to go, she continues sitting there, watching me with her large blue eyes.
And I don’t know if it’s residual stress from my encounter with Von Nevus, or if the discrepancies about Rowenna’s time here are slowly driving me mad, but the knots in my stomach cinch tighter and tighter until I suddenly blur,“I-I also want to apologize for whatever Ro put you through. I don’t know what to believe, and I don’t want to make excuses for her—I know an apology from me isn’t the same—but she must have been so scared, so desperate. The sister I know would never have…”
My voice trails off. Because, the truth is, I don’t know what this version of Rowenna might have done.
My sister’s stricken face fills my mind, as if summoned by my betrayal. Is that truly how you feel? she asks, but her voice is soft and oddly far away. Far enough, I don’t feel compelled to answer right away.
My maid clears her throat, not trying to hide the fact that she’s watching me.
I laugh because what else is there to do? “You think I’m out of my mind, don’t you?”
She shakes her head, and her eyes soften. “You’re really nothing like her, are you?”
I don’t have to ask who she means, and under any other circumstance, this would be the worst sort of insult.
To be nothing like my sister is to be everything witless, spineless, and weak.
But after all the lies and inconsistencies, and my visit with Garitt Von Nevus, I can’t deny this declaration fills me with the smallest bit of relief.
Which brings yet another wave of guilt crashing down on my head.
“I’m Delphine, by the way,” my maid offers.
“Indira,” I say, though I’m certain she knows this.
Delphine leans back on her hands and stares out the window, watching the swooping birds and the skiffs of white snow billowing off the peaks.
“I have a sister too,” she says. “So I know how confusing and infuriating they can be. But I also know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Cloudia, so I understand why you feel the need to defend Rowenna—and why you’re so determined to figure out what happened to her. ”
This unexpected acknowledgment, this sliver of genuine understanding, makes tears spring to my eyes. Which makes me feel even more ridiculous and pathetic. A testament to how lonely and desperate I am. Rowenna is probably rolling over in her grave.
I clear my throat and try to discreetly wipe my tears on my sleeve. “Does Cloudia work in the palace too? Is she older or younger than you?”
“Cloudia is three years younger—sixteen—and she’s an incredibly talented seamstress. She beat out a dozen more experienced craftsman to apprentice with the Fortress’s finest modiste. And this was two years ago, when she was just fourteen. But this past year, she became too ill to work.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and I truly am. I don’t know which is worse: to have your sister ripped away without warning, like Rowenna, or to watch her suffer. “What does Cloudia have? Is it treatable?”
A pained expression flits across Delphine’s face before she steers the conversation back to my sister.
“Rowenna wasn’t always horrible, you know.
She had many friends here, and she told the most amusing stories at dinner.
And she kept her things tidy, never making extra work for me.
But she had another side too. It’s almost like she was two different people stuffed inside the same body.
I never knew which version to expect: the silly courtier or the snarling beast.”
“‘Snarling beast’?” I repeat.
Delphine’s face reddens. “That’s obviously an exaggeration, but that’s what those of us who caught her prowling the halls at odd hours called her because she always flew into a rage and started hurling accusations.”
I still can’t imagine Rowenna doing any of this, but I want to keep Delphine talking, so I nod. “I’m beginning to understand why you weren’t thrilled to meet me. I’ve been stalking around the palace just like her.”
“Except, unlike Rowenna, you have every reason to be hostile and suspicious. Your sister died, and you were dragged here as her replacement. Rowenna was treated like a queen from the moment she set foot on the mountain, yet she was always spinning, always meddling. It’s like she was possessed—consumed with something that took her out of her chambers almost every night.
I think that’s the true reason she banished me to the balcony. So she could sneak about more easily.”
Goose bumps prickle the backs of my arms, and I sit up straighter. “Do you know what she was doing? Where she was going?”
From the time we were young, Ro loved sneaking out of our bedchamber under the hill—mostly to play pranks and make mischief in the fields with Haddesh.
But she wouldn’t have been gallivanting about here or trying to escape.
She would have been looking for clues. Cracks.
Perhaps she was visiting the Vanzadorians’ gemstone mines at night, hoping to find a way to destroy their economy as they’ve destroyed Tashir’s.
Or she could have been searching for the caches where they keep our bagrava tributes—to stop the courtiers from wastefully guzzling it.
Or maybe she was trying to find and access the memories the Vanzadorian people deposit into the ground—to keep Soren and Alaric from using them as fuel.
Whatever she was doing—whatever she discovered—was damning enough to cost her her life.